The Breath Of An Outside God
by Shantih
Summary: Malik has committed a great crime in the city of the Pharaoh. Ishizu helps him to escape to the desert, where an uncertain fate awaits him...I can't say anymore without giving it away! Please R&R!
1. I

A/N: I've had this idea for quite some time…I'm rather proud of how the beginning turned out. Just a warning, Atemu isn't really a good guy in this story. And about the title of the story – in Ancient Egypt, when somebody was struck dumb or unable to talk, they would say he had been touched by the breath of an outside god, and had become silent in sadness. The idea is that it's something that entered them from without.

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh or any of its characters, surprise surprise. Enjoy!

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Ishizu rushed around her chambers frantically, desperately searching for anything that might help – money, gold or jewels. This was a matter of life or death, and for the first time in her life she could remember, she cursed that her family hadn't been richer.

She searched methodically through all the rooms. Finally, hidden away in her deceased mother's room, she was able to find some family heirlooms – several gold necklaces and torques, earrings, rings, bangles and headdresses. Although it broke her heart to do so, she had to take them. She stopped in her sparse bedroom one last time, and gathered together what extra money she had. It wasn't much, but she hoped it was enough. With a soft sigh, she gazed around her chamber, well aware that this could be both her and Malik's last night in this world.

It was the dead of night, at the hour when most of the citizens of Egypt would be fast asleep, save the wicked. Ishizu snuck out of the palace chambers, as silently as she could. She'd told Malik to meet her far away from the palace, in a different part of the city, and there was no way she would let him down by getting caught now. She left the palace by the back entrance, used mainly by the kitchen workers, where there were usually no guards. Her breath sounded very loud to her as she snuck along the corridors, and her heart was beating so hard she was afraid she'd faint.

At last she was out in the cool night air. With a glance around, she ascertained that the path ahead was clear. Drawing a dark cloak around herself, she ran quickly towards the edges of the palace grounds. It was not far from there to the city.

*

Malik waited in the shadows by the abandoned bazaar. He'd been there for an hour, and was so on edge that the slightest sound caused by wind or a passing mouse caused him to jump and his heart to leap into his throat. He was so terrified that he was starting to hear noises that weren't there. He stared down the empty moonlit street, eyes wide, straining to hear anything that might be Ishizu. He had no idea why she'd told him to wait out here, or what she was planning to do, but she was the only person he trusted right now. He had no choice.

A hand came out from behind him and covered his mouth. He jumped and spun around, only to see that it was just Ishizu.

"I didn't want you to scream," she explained. "Come with me."

Leading Malik by the hand, Ishizu ran through the deserted alleys that would take them to the city's limits, taking care to keep to the shadows. Malik himself was dressed only in sandals and a simple black garment that covered his lower half. Ishizu was wrapped entirely in a dark cloak, making it nearly impossible to see her in the night, even with the strong light of the moon.

Ishizu looked around a corner, and drew back, trembling. "There's a guard out there," she whispered to her brother. Malik peered out. The man was walking away from them, and didn't seem to be alerted to their presence. Once he disappeared around a distant bend, Malik took his sister's hand, and they made their way to the outer wall of the city.

"The Pharaoh has guards stationed everywhere around the entrances," Ishizu explained to Malik in a hushed voice. "But see that spot over there? The wall's crumbled at the bottom, and nobody has fixed it yet. We can get through there."

Her little brother had never been outside the city limits before. Although the young man nodded bravely, she could still see fear lurking behind his violet eyes. She sighed. She regretted not being able to tell Malik where they were going, but she was afraid he would lose all heart and stay in the city. Staying in the city meant certain death. Leaving the city, he still had a chance, though it might be a slim one. Malik was looking nervously at the top of the wall, which had metal spikes sticking straight up out of it to dissuade trespassers. There were a few human and bird skeletons impaled there which nobody had bothered to remove. _That's the sad truth about an empire or a city, _Ishizu reflected; _at the edges, things fall apart. _

She looked at Malik's face, and knew he was trying not to cry. "Come on, little one, be brave," she told him, doing her best to smile. She was the only person who called him that, although he was a mere three years younger than she was. No matter how strong or tall he got, he would always be her baby brother.

Malik nodded, with a gulp. She put her arms around him, and hugged him as tight as she could. He clung onto her as if he were drowning and didn't want to let go. "I'm sorry, Ishizu. Through my stupidity, I've put you in danger as well as myself."

"Nonsense, Malik. The moon has turned your head. It was not stupidity. You did what you did because it was your only choice. The fault lies not with you," she told him, making eye contact to make sure he understood and wouldn't blame himself. "It lies with the Pharaoh, for refusing to see reality as it is. His sin is willfully choosing darkness and ignorance. I have sworn loyalty to him, but my first allegiance is to Ra, and I know if Atemu continues to lie to himself and to his people, it will not go well for him in the afterlife."

Malik stared at her, stunned. This was the first time he'd heard he say something so critical of the Pharaoh, whom she usually served faithfully. Ishizu let go of him and took his cold hand, leading him closer to the wall. "And I am not in danger." She rescinded. "At least, I don't think I am," she told him honestly, unable to lie. He looked at the ground, aware of what Ishizu meant. She could pretend not to know anything, but if they found out she had helped him escape…well, that was something she preferred not to think about.

She pushed aside some of the crumbling stone, and found a hole big enough to crawl through. Malik followed her, and they stood up finally in the cold desert air. Her little brother was now the farthest away from home he'd ever been. Ishizu took off her cloak, and Malik gasped.

She was wearing a white ceremonial gown, which shone eerily in the moonlight, seeming to glow. Yet that was not what he had startled at. Ishizu was wearing nearly all of their family's jewels, from the turquoise belt that encircled her waist, to the bejeweled headdress that sat proudly atop her hair. She wore countless bangles and bands on her bare arms, a gold necklace lay around her neck, and amethyst ornaments dangled from her ears. Many rings adorned her fingers, and the anklets around her feet made a jingling sound as she walked.

"Ishizu? What is this?" stuttered Malik, staring at her finery. The priestess looked away. Although she was doing this for him, she could not help but feel like she had also betrayed him. She'd taken their family heirlooms, for one thing. She was also leading him trustingly into a very hazardous situation, which neither of them might emerge from. She took a deep breath. She would not let him see her cry.

"Where are we going?" he asked her, and this time there was fear in his voice as he looked at her.

"I cannot tell you just yet," she told him, trying to sound reassuring. "I simply ask that you trust me. We may survive, and we may not. Just know that if we die together tonight, we will see each other in the Afterlife before long." She smiled at her baby brother and kissed the end of his nose. Malik looked simultaneously stunned and relieved. After all was said and done, it was not as if he hadn't faced death before. And at least, he didn't have to walk that shadowy path alone. The best thing about having a priestess for a sister, he knew, was her unwavering faith in the power of the Gods, the kindness of Ra, and the promise of the world to come. Without her, he would have despaired long ago.

She took his hand. Together, they set off into the desert. Ishizu led them in the direction she knew they must go. Across the moonlit sand, they walked in silence, the jingling of Ishizu's anklets the only sound for miles. Malik was holding onto his sister's hand so tightly it hurt. The priestess gazed up at the sky as they walked.

Malik's strength began to flag as they journeyed on. Ishizu was not surprised; he had not slept for the past few nights – he had only been chased from hiding place to hiding place. Looking at her weary brother, Ishizu formed a silent prayer to Isis that, if her brother did not survive the night, neither would she. She would rather die than go on without him, knowing she had led him to his death.

The moon rose higher in the sky, shedding its ghostly light across the desert sand. The murmur of the wind seemed to whisper across the wasteland – or was it the echo of a human voice? The priestess' bare feet detected a trembling in the ground, and indeed, only a second later, she detected the galloping of many hooves drawing closer. Malik heard it too. Terrified, he stared at her, searching her eyes for an answer.

"Ah, the moment of truth," was all she said, serenely. She embraced Malik, and held him tight. He buried his face in her shoulder, and Ishizu closed her eyes, praying for strength.

"A-ha, what do we have here?" she heard a deep voice drawl at last. "A couple of lost children?"

Ishizu opened her eyes. A huge black horse stood before her, and on its back was the one she had been expecting – the King of Thieves himself. Flanking him was his band of thieves, all of them riding dark stallions. They surrounded her and Malik, forming a circle they could not escape from. Ishizu still held Malik. She could tell he was still too frightened to look up.

Ishizu looked up at the Thief King. She had never seen the man before – only heard legends and tales of the things he'd done, and seen the bloody aftermath of his raids. He loomed above her like a shadow in the night. His white hair was illuminated by the moon, and his grey eyes shone, looking down at her and Malik with a predatory gleam. His skin was dark as the nighttime desert sand.

A low chuckle, and then: "Well, aren't you going to beg for your lives?"

Ishizu mustered up all the courage she had, and held Malik tighter. "Thief King!" she addressed him boldly. "We have come to make a deal with you." She felt her brother go stiff.

The man on the horse lifted an eyebrow. "Have you now?" he asked, sounding condescending, but slightly interested. "And who are you, that you believe you can bargain with me?"

Ishizu took a breath. "I am Ishizu, a priestess at the palace of the Pharaoh." At the mention of the god-king of Egypt, the men surrounding them started to laugh. The Thief King cracked a contemptuous smile, as his horse began to paw impatiently at the ground. "This is my younger brother, Malik."

The Thief King seized the reins of his steed, and leapt down neatly from its back. He approached Ishizu and Malik slowly, his crimson robe billowing around his feet and the cold desert wind blowing his hair wildly.

He was even taller than Ishizu had judged at first, and stronger than she had expected. He towered over the shorter noblewoman. Afraid, she unconsciously took a step backwards.

"Ishizu," he said, looking down at her. He was not smiling, but his grey eyes danced as if with a private joke. "Pleased to meet you, priestess." He took her hand, which seemed to have gone limp. His hand was strong, rough and weathered. He bowed, and brought her hand to his lips in a kiss. "Now, Malik," he said, unexpectedly addressing the young man, "is there a reason you're hiding from me?" The young man's face was still buried in his sister's shoulder.

With a nudge from Ishizu, Malik let go of her. Keeping his eyes fixed on the ground, he turned to face the Thief King and nodded respectfully, too scared to look around him.

The taller man reached out and took Malik's chin, forcing him to look up. Fearful violet eyes met calm grey ones. "Pleased to meet you, Majesty," he said softly, making a play on Malik's name. He sounded amused, but no less dangerous.

"Forgive my younger brother's shyness, Thief King," Ishizu interjected. "This is his first time being outside city walls."

"I see," the man replied, studying Ishizu carefully. "Then it behooves me to ask what the Pharaoh's subjects are doing out here, in the desert. Especially in all this finery." He reached out brazenly and ran a hand up Ishizu's arm, touching her bracelets. His lips curved in a smile as his fingers found their way to her neck, and traced along her throat, lingering on her necklace. She drew back, indignant. The Thief King simply laughed.

It was not often Ishizu was touched without her permission, especially with such audacity. She forced herself to calm down, and gripped her brother's hand tightly. Malik still stood at her side, staring down at the ground.

"I appeal to your honor, Thief King, when I tell you I have come here purposely to offer you a deal."

The man lifted his eyebrows and crossed his arms. "What makes you think I have any? I am, after all, a lowly thief, and a commoner to boot." The words were humble, but his tone was not. He smiled as if daring Ishizu to disagree.

"I am aware of your reputation. Yet you forget I am a priestess." She lifted her eyes to meet his gaze straight on. "It is part of my duty to look past the exterior of people's appearances, and see into their true natures. I see you are a man of honor, and you are a thief. The two are not exclusive."

The teasing smile vanished. The thief studied her with newfound interest. "I see," he murmured quietly. "You are not a typical Pharaoh's pet."

"Nor have I any reason to be," she returned, defiantly, remembering the injustice that had been perpetrated against her brother.

"Well, well. How fascinating." His eyes roamed from Ishizu to Malik, who seemed to be shivering. "Cold, Majesty?" It took a moment for Malik to realize the thief was addressing him. He shook his head.

"I think," said the Thief King, rubbing his hands together, "that this calls for a celebration." He reached into his saddle bag and withdrew a stoppered bottle half-filled with a dark liquid. "I propose a toast, Ishizu. To your bravery, and my honor." He moved a little too close to her for comfort, offering her the bottle.

Ishizu couldn't tell if he was mocking her, or being serious. She looked up at him, holding the bottle out to her with a half-grin. This was clearly a challenge. He was trying to see if she meant what she had said about his honor. Forcing her to take the first drink was a way of testing her trust – and of course, her courage. Despite what she had said about his honor, she felt very far indeed from trusting the man. For all she knew, the liquid could be poisoned. And it was hardly fitting for a priestess of Isis to be drinking alcohol separate from a ceremony, let alone with a strange man in the middle of the desert. She knew the Thief King knew this. Would she play on his level? Or would she remain proud? She knew she had only one choice.

Ishizu took the bottle from him and tipped it back, taking a long drink. It was date-wine, but quite different from the kind they typically served in the palace. It was dark and sweet, heady and potent and overpowering. Ishizu was glad for once she could hold her alcohol. She handed the bottle back to the Thief King, knowing she had passed the test. She met his eyes and knew he understood.

He touched his forehead to her as a sign of respect and took another long drink, finishing off what was left in the bottle. He tossed it away and turned back to Ishizu.

"Now, priestess, let's hear your proposition."

_Isis, lend me your guidance_, Ishizu thought. After remaining a while in silence, she lifted her head and spoke to the thief.

"My brother, Malik, is wanted in the city of the Pharaoh. Staying there means certain death for him." She glanced at Malik, who swallowed and kept staring at the ground. "I know of no place he can escape to and be safe. The Pharaoh's empire stretches out to both the horizons. Wherever he goes, he will be hunted down."

"Wanted, eh? Wanted for what?" The Thief King was studying Malik now, sizing him up. The skinny noble didn't look at the moment like he had much fight in him. However, the thief of all people knew that people were often capable of much more than it seemed at first.

"For murder." This was the first time Malik had spoken. His voice shook, but was determined.

_Well, well_, thought the Thief King. "So you do talk." He stepped in front of the smaller man and lifted his chin again. Hesitantly, the violet eyes lifted to meet his. The fear in them was so great the thief wouldn't have been surprised if the boy had fainted. But he managed to hold the thief's gaze.

"You killed a man?" asked the Thief King evenly.

"Yes," said Malik. The thief could feel him shaking.

"Who?"

Finally, Malik seemed to be unable to reply.

"Mahado," Ishizu said, answering for him. "A priest of the Pharaoh."

"And one of your colleagues," the Thief King mused. "Yes, I knew Mahado." _One man the world is better off without, _he thought but did not say.

With that, he fell silent. His band of thieves made not a noise. Their horses were still. Malik was petrified in fear.

"Well, priestess? I'm still waiting to hear your proposal."

"My proposal is this," Ishizu said, quietly but firmly. "You will take my brother and protect him." The Thief King noticed how Malik suddenly snapped out of his haze of fear and stared at Ishizu with plain terror transparent on his face. It was obvious the brother hadn't been filled in on the plan.

"You will make sure he does not fall into the hands of the Pharaoh. You will care for him and give him shelter." Ishizu met the Thief King's grey gaze. His face betrayed no reaction. "In return, I will give you these jewels I am wearing, and the money I have brought with me. They are all I have. And in return, Malik will serve you as best he can for however long you shelter him. We call upon your honor, Thief King, and we beg humbly for your assistance."

Ishizu lowered her proud head in deference. Malik was still staring at her in disbelief, unable to speak. Ishizu turned and met Malik's eyes calmly, and the boy seemed to crumble. He clutched Isis, burying his head in her shoulder once more. The priestess embraced him.

"No, please no," he sobbed quietly, so that only she could hear. "Don't leave me here."

The Thief King saw a look of pain cross the sister's face. "Little one," she soothed, "there is no other way. All will be well." Holding her brother, she looked at the thief expectantly.

Ishizu knew that now, her leverage was gone. She had nothing left to bargain with. She could only hope that somehow, her jewels and Malik's servitude were worth the outlaw's protection. And even so, she had no guarantee he would treat Malik well. She knew that even if he accepted the offer, he could just kill Malik as soon as she was gone, and there would be nothing to stop him. She stroked her little brother's blonde head lovingly, willing him to stop shaking.

"Interesting, priestess." All trace of humor was gone from the Thief King's gaze. His grey eyes had gone steely and cold. "In return for a servant and a handful of jewels, you ask me to take a murderer under my wing." As if on cue, his men dismounted from their horses. She noticed seven hands going under seven capes to grasp seven hidden knives.

Fear, cold and sharp as a blade, ran through Ishizu's heart. She hadn't counted on this.

"You have some nerve, O priestess of Isis."

Filled with fury at the thief, she tore Malik away from her and pushed him towards the taller man, who stood haughtily, silhouetted against the moon.

"Look at him," she cried angrily. "Does he look to you like a cold-blooded killer?"

The outlaw moved closer to Malik. He put a strong hand on his head, feeling the softness of his hair. His fingers traced down the side of the young man's face. Malik was breathing shallowly, standing stock still as the thief took him in. The older man met his eyes, and Malik was too petrified to look away.

"Of course not," replied the Thief King. "But people will always surprise you." Roughly, he shoved Malik's slight body back into his sister's arms. "You of all people should know that, priestess." The young noble collapsed against Ishizu, fainting. Holding him, she sank to the ground, and cradled his unconscious body in her arms. Defiantly, she met the Thief King's gaze. He simply raised his eyebrows, wondering if she had anything more to say.

Ishizu kissed Malik's clammy brow, and gave him a silent blessing. She would not fail him now.

Raising her arm, she beckoned to the Thief King to kneel in front of her. The authority in that simple gesture surprised him. Deciding to humor her, he knelt before her and her brother, lowering his head in mock deference.

"Any last words, priestess?" he demanded.

Ishizu reached out and drew the Thief King close. She then leaned forward and whispered softly into his ear.

"You of all people should know, O Thief King, that there are some circumstances that will justify even murder."

Confused, and suddenly on guard, the Thief King tensed, but Ishizu's hand on his shoulder was firm.

"I know about Kul Elna, tomb robber. Akhenadin told me on his death bed."

The man drew away from her, and stood up slowly, unsettled, never breaking her penetrating gaze.

"The dark places of the human heart cannot always be held accountable, O King of Thieves," she murmured.

How on earth could she know? How did she understand?

A kind of holy fear went through his veins like ice. Indeed, he could see now that the strength of the Gods was in her, and the blessing of Ra on her soul. At the moment, holding her weak younger brother, she looked to the Thief King exactly like an image he had once seen of Isis cradling Horus. Trying to regain his bearings, the outlaw ran a trembling hand through his hair.

His men looked to him, waiting on command, wondering what to do next. Overwhelmed, he held up a hand to let them know not to move. He turned his back on them all, not wanting them to see should he betray any emotion. Troubled, he looked out over the seemingly infinite desert. Somehow, he had never imagined that another human being could understand that much. He himself knew that not only could the shadows of a man's soul be capable of terrible things, but there were some things hidden within those shadows that could never be spoken of, or guessed. Above him, the stars filled the night sky, shining with the dead light of the past.

He finally turned back to Ishizu. She saw a sadness in his gaze that seemed to come from a million miles away. His eyes were shadowed and weary, and the radiance of the early morning moon danced in flickers across the planes of his face as he moved.

The King of Thieves picked up Malik, who was beginning to stir, and lifted him easily onto the back of his horse. He then turned back to Ishizu. He took her by the shoulders, and helped her to her feet so she was level with him once more.

He bowed to her for a third time, and this time he was not mocking. "I accept your offer, O priestess of Isis," he told her.

With all the solemnity of ritual, he lifted the headdress from Ishizu's hair. The amethyst earrings went into his pocket, and one by one, he removed all the bracelets and rings from her hands. He unhooked the gold necklace, and the turquoise belt. Kneeling by her feet, he took off all the anklets, and hid everything away in his robe. Ishizu spoke when he rose.

"You have saved us," she said simply. "You have my gratitude. But will you promise me one thing?"

The Thief King nodded and she continued. "Please promise that my brother will be safe with you. That he will come to no harm at the hands of either you or your men."

"You have my word, my lady. On Isis' immortal name." With that, he removed the gold chain he always wore around his wrist, and clasped it around Ishizu's. "Consider this a token of my vow."

Looking up, he saw the horizon was bleeding pink. The moon was sinking into the West. Soon, he knew, the people of the Pharaoh's city would be waking.

The Thief King mounted his black steed. In front of him on the horse, Malik was just coming round, looking around groggily.

"Yah!" he shouted, getting his men's attention. "Go back to Dje-Nebu. Wait for me there, and get some rest. You'll be needing it. Go!"

His men galloped off. The Thief King watched them fade into the distance. Then he looked down and reached out a hand to Ishizu. "Get on behind me. I'll take you back to the Pharaoh's city."

Ishizu did so, clasping her arms around his waist. The man dug his heels into the horse's side, and they thundered across the desert, so fast they almost seemed to fly. The Thief King crouched down, the reins in his hand. His arms closed in Malik on both sides, so he had no chance of falling off.

The desert flew by beneath the black hooves. The sun was almost at the horizon, and the sky was turning rosy. Before Ishizu knew it, they were back at the city borders, at the exact spot they had escaped through the wall. It occurred to her that obviously the Thief King must know about this weak spot in the city's defenses. In all probability, he had put it there. The horse halted silently, and the thief dismounted, turning back to lift Ishizu off.

"Well, little one, I guess this is where we say goodbye," she said, smiling up at Malik.

For a moment, her little brother almost seemed like he was ten years old again. "Don't leave, Ishizu. Please."

"I have no choice. But I believe you will be safe. Malik, promise me you will not try to come back here, all right?"

He nodded mutely, still beseeching her with his eyes not to go.

"Don't worry, little one," she told him, squeezing his hand fondly. "I'll see you again, don't worry. I just don't know when." She lifted her hand in farewell. "I love you." She turned to go, the tears finally breaking free.

The Thief King took her shoulder and pulled her towards the entrance in the wall. She looked at him, eyes wet, questioning.

"It's already morning," he muttered. "The guards will be alert. If they see you, they'll want to know why you were out. Just go along with it."

Ishizu crawled through the entrance in the wall. The Thief King followed, keeping one hand on her arm. Two guards patrolling the nearby street spotted them, immediately recognizing the notorious outlaw, and ran towards them shouting.

Quick as a flash, the King of Thieves had his curved sword drawn, pressing it to Ishizu's throat, his other arm around her torso, rendering her immobile. The guards stopped in their tracks.

"Back off, you fools," he thundered. "You want me to slit her throat? Just come closer."

They moved away. The outlaw grinned triumphantly. The blade flashed in the light of the rising sun.

"Don't worry," he said scornfully. "You can have your priestess. I've gotten everything I wanted from her." With that, he shoved her away from him roughly. Ishizu fell hard on the stony ground.

The Thief King backed away. The guards stayed where they were, frozen, watching the Thief King as he retreated, still brandishing the sword. "What kind of men are you?" he demanded fiercely. "Can't you even help a woman up from the ground?" The men still didn't move, watching him.

He laughed without humor. "If the Pharaoh has chosen you out of his best men to defend his city, then I fear your Kingdom of Egypt is in poor shape indeed. Fare well, priestess. May the soul of the Gods protect you better."

The Thief King looked back at Ishizu a final time. Their eyes met briefly, and then, like a shadow, he had disappeared to the other side.

It was only when he was out of sight that the guards rushed to see if she was all right. Closing her eyes, the priestess sent a silent blessing to follow her brother.

On the other side of the wall, the Thief King jumped up onto his horse behind the young noble and spurred it on as hard as he could. They tore across the Sahara, the sound of galloping hooves drowning out everything else. Malik watched the world go by. He was too exhausted to curse himself for this whole mess anymore. Instead, he stared out across the morning desert for the first time in his life. This day made by Ra seemed to touch everything with magic, creating the world anew. Despite what Ishizu had said, Malik was not at all sure he would ever see her again. Right now, everything he had ever had was gone. His soul felt as empty as the horizon in front of him. He was not a person who liked change. His life had been turned inside-out more times than he could count, and Ishizu had always been his one constant. Now she was gone, and he'd been left alone with this strange man riding behind him – a dangerous person he didn't know and was scared to death of. Malik considered praying for death. After all, what did he have to look forward to? A lifetime of hiding from the Pharaoh? A lifetime of this crippling fear? Silently, he began to weep.

Behind him, the Thief King noticed as the young man's body was wracked by sobs. He couldn't pretend he didn't know how the noble felt. At this point, though, he knew that "change", "loss" and "emptiness" were just so many more words for freedom. It wasn't the kind of thing you could tell someone. Malik would have to figure that out for himself.

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Please review! I tried to use my best writing abilities with this one, and I would really appreciate feedback…constructive criticism is welcomed too! I love getting reviews, I always respond to each and every one I get! Also, I am not sure whether I should continue this story – I have lots of ideas about where it'll go, but I'm not sure if it's better as a one-shot. Let me know what you think…


	2. II

It's been a while, hasn't it? Good news, I am definitely gonna keep going with this story. Thank you so much to all the lovely people who reviewed last time: **taste the rainbow eat crayons** (lol), **Mel-Girl**, **Melissa Brite**, **Bokua Haiiyou Kai**, **BlueFox of the Moon**, **mystralwind**, **albino-yaoi**, **Mittzy**, **Dawn3**, and especially **Ryou VeRua** and **ltkk022**. You guys are awesome, I send you much internetz-love.

About this chapter: bear with me – it's a lot of setup for what comes next. On another note, I have discovered a new inspiration in the form of Coptic hymns. The language is actually directly descended from Ancient Egyptian. The music they are set to, I think, is actually the same music that was once used during ceremonies in Ancient Egypt. Anyway, that's what I listen to when writing this. You should check out the one called "Epouro" on youtube. _Tangent._

Disclaimer: Sorry to post this chapter twice but I forgot it the first time. I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh or any of its characters. I kind of own Zaza though, because I invented him.

Anyway, without further ado, the chapter!

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**I**t was the dead of night, at the hour when a cold spell came over the desert – leeching away the warmth of the sun, sending forth one's breath in clouds. It was incredibly dangerous to be in the tomb when the full moon was out. The tomb robbers of Egypt favored its light, working only when the sun was down. He was without defenses, and if he ran into any outlaws, Malik knew they would not hesitate to cut him down. He wished with all his might he was anywhere but here. But did he really have a choice? When one of the priests gave an order, they expected it to be carried out.

The young man's footsteps were loud in the dark hallway, echoing hollowly off sepulchral wastes of limestone and granite. The only other sound was his own labored breathing – his chest was tight from inexplicable dread. He forced himself to keep walking, tightening his grip on the oil lamps he was carrying for fear his arms would give out. A lone candle was his sole illumination, casting a feeble light on the hieroglyph-riddled walls.

The underground tomb of Aknamkanon was vast and dim, filled with traps meant to lead robbers to their deaths, sealed-off exits, and long passageways that went nowhere. Malik had been there many times before, when the exhausted slaves had still been busy laying down the final stones. He had not been present for the ritual, when they had laid the god-king to rest before his journey to the Afterlife. How thankful he was for that, they'd never know. But now he was back again, alone this time. How ironic that, for someone who hated being in tombs so much, he couldn't seem to escape them. He was not a priest-in-training himself, but because of his proximity to Ishizu, he often got saddled with lower-level duties the priests needed done. Usually slaves would have performed these tasks, but Mahado, naturally a suspicious man, didn't trust any of the palace slaves enough to let within a mile of the dead Pharaoh's tomb.

There was little ventilation in the tomb, and as a result, the air he now breathed was heavy, stale and dead, ripe with the underground smell that never failed to turn Malik's stomach. The lack of fresh oxygen was beginning to make him dizzy, but he refused to let himself stop, knowing that the sooner he got the job done, the sooner he could escape outside.

By candlelight, Malik consulted the map he'd been given. It was cryptic and difficult to read, but after a few wrong turns that led nowhere, he'd managed to more or less make sense of it. Bypassing a dead-end passageway, Malik finally arrived at the wide, low-ceilinged hallway that led to the dead Pharaoh's chamber. He knew this was the right one, even though it was neither as imposing or extravagantly decorated as the other passageways. It was built purposely plain and demure; an old ruse to confuse tomb robbers and lure them somewhere else. With a sigh, Malik put down the heavy clay oil lamps he'd been carrying. He took one and, reaching up, placed it in the shadowy alcove that had been specially carved out. The lamps were needed the next day, for the priests were coming in to perform a special post-burial ritual on the Pharaoh's mummy. The young man tried not to imagine what that would entail. He was simply thankful that this time he did not have to go inside the actual sealed chamber where the sarcophagus had now lain, gathering dust, for seven months.

Amazing how seven months could make such a difference. And wondrous too, how one man's life could sustain an empire. In his sudden absence, the Kingdom of Egypt, like a dead tree, had begun to groan under its own weight. Perhaps it too was slowly dying, crumbling like the body in the sealed chamber. But to Malik it seemed that if the Kingdom fell, the sky must follow soon after.

Suddenly – inexplicably - a cool breeze from behind swirled around his body, lifting his hair. Startled, Malik gasped and spun around so fast he dropped the candle and the oil lamp he'd just picked up. The candle fell to the ground, flickered, and went out, plunging the young man into total darkness.

"Oh no…" Malik moaned to himself.

Trembling, the young man closed his eyes against the inky blackness that surrounded him and took a deep breath, trying to suppress his rising hysteria. As he felt around on the ground, his fingers encountered the shattered pieces of the oil lamp, and Malik immediately felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He'd been given just enough lamps to fill all the alcoves in the hall. If one was missing, Mahado would be sure to notice. Mahado was just as painstakingly attentive to detail as High Priest Seth, but unlike the latter, he was less forgiving of mistakes.

Malik shuddered, thinking of the punishment he'd no doubt be given. The cuts on the soles of his feet were not fully healed from the last mistake he'd made – when he'd accidentally come into the room where Mahado was having a private talk with the Pharaoh Atemu. Mahado always made sure to make the wounds on a part of his body he could conceal. The priest had made it abundantly clear that if Ishizu ever found out, Malik would be in more pain than he'd even considered possible. Malik had no desire to find out what that meant, and so, he remained silent. He didn't want to hurt his sister by telling her either – although she had never told him in so many words, he knew Ishizu was in love with Mahado. He couldn't blame her really; Mahado was quite attractive, and he could be very charming and likeable in public. He knew Mahado was fiercely loyal to the Pharaoh Atemu, and would serve him with his dying breath. How could you not love a man like that? Sighing, Malik shook his head. He supposed he couldn't really blame Mahado either – after all, everyone had a good side and a bad side. The young noble was just unlucky that the priest chose to unleash his darker side on him.

Malik opened his eyes wide, trying to see something – anything – in the darkness, but it was no use. His surroundings were pitch black; he might as well have been submerged in ink. He couldn't even see his hand two inches in front of his face. He couldn't hear anything either, which could be good or bad. Good if it meant no one was there, bad if it meant whoever was there was so good at being silent.

The darkness was so complete, it seemed to press at his eyes with an invisible weight. Malik felt his way over to the pile of oil lamps and began to fumble around, searching for a match, flint, anything he could use to relight the candle. But there was nothing there. Malik collapsed to his knees, and huddled against the side of the hallway.

Utterly forsaken, Malik let out a long, shuddering breath. He was really in the middle of the Pharaoh's underground tomb, with no light and no way to get back. Only one person knew he was here. He had a map, but now wouldn't be able to read it. Even if he tried to feel his way back to the exit, the chance was much better than even he would run into one of the deadly traps. What if the priests decided not to come the next day? It was entirely possible; they tended to play things by ear, and there was certainly no rush to get the ceremony done. After all, the King was dead. By the time they found him, he stood a good chance of either having been killed by robbers, or having starved to death in the dark. What a hideous way to die. Malik gulped; despite his best efforts to keep himself under control, a few tears rolled down his face. He buried his face in his hands, trying to pretend he was anywhere but here. He would gladly withstand any punishment Mahado could dish out, as long as he didn't have to be _here._

The lack of oxygen was getting to him. His head felt dull and heavy, a throbbing pain in his temples refusing to subside. Malik closed his eyes, and the ground beneath him began to spin and reel crazily. Before he knew it, the young man had slipped into unconciousness.

Ω

**A** rustling noise, somewhere close to him. Malik stirred where he still sat against the wall, murmuring an unspoken question in half-sleep.

The rustling, there it was again, but farther away. Malik opened his eyes and sat up, groaning as he remembered where he was. He put a hand against the hewn rock wall to steady himself and pulled it back with a shudder as something cold crawled over his fingers. Had he imagined the rustling sound? It was gone now…

His head still hurt, but it seemed to be slightly easier to breathe now. Vaguely, he wondered how long he'd been out. He hugged his legs against his torso, willing the darkness invading from all sides to disappear. Darkness is not the absence of light, Malik thought to himself. Darkness is something else.

All of a sudden, a pinprick of light appeared on the opposite wall. Malik blinked and stared at it. Could it be daylight? No, it was wavering around, flickering, yellow and white with heat. It was beautiful.

"Hello?" Malik tried to call, but all that came out was a cracked whisper. He tried again, louder this time, and the rustling came again. The burning flame drew closer, hypnotic in its intensity. Malik tried to form words, to ask if he was going to be killed or not, but found himself unable to do anything but stare at the dancing fire.

The flame was very close now. The thought occurred to Malik that perhaps he had died. Hesitantly, he reached an unsteady hand towards the fire, feeling its warmth…

Suddenly, a hand shot out of the dark and closed around his wrist. Malik cried out and tried to pull away, but whoever had just grabbed him was strong, and not about to let go. The young man twisted this way and that, but the unseen assailant just tightened their grip until a sharp pain shot up his arm and he stopped struggling.

"Please, who…" he managed to get out.

"You don't recognize me? How insulting." The candle moved, and suddenly Malik could see Mahado's face illuminated fitfully by the flickering light. His face was like one of the stone carvings – grim and still. His eyes, a dull purple-grey in the gloom, betrayed no emotion. It was rare that the priest was seen out of ceremonial garb; tonight he was dressed just as simply as Malik was, with his long hair hanging free around his shoulders. Yet the uncharacteristic casualness of his dress put the younger man on guard as nothing else could have.

Malik was confused, torn between joy at the fact someone had found him, that his prayer had been answered, and dull dismay at who it was. "You followed me here?"

Mahado gave a short, humorless laugh, as if Malik was being a simpleton. "What do you expect? You honestly think I'd let a fool like you alone in Aknamkanon's tomb? You're practically a walking invitation for robbers. Do you know you didn't even deadbolt the entrance?"

The sting of his words brought sudden tears to Malik's eyes. No matter what he did, there was always something he'd screwed up, something he'd forgotten…

"I see you managed to break one of the ceremonial oil lamps as well. Good job, half-wit." Mahado released Malik's wrist and stood up. "Get up, I don't have all night."

Malik slowly got to his feet, keeping his eyes on the priest. "I beg your pardon?" he asked, trying to keep his voice level. He could have died in the tomb, for a stupid errand Mahado had thought fit to send him on, and even now, as usual, the man was treating him like a dog. Worse than a dog. Nobody, no matter how twisted, would cut up a dog's paws so it couldn't walk, would they? He knew Mahado would be quick to pick up on any anger he failed to conceal, and at the moment it was threatening to overflow. He had no doubt Mahado would inflict punishment later anyway, but he tried to calm down, telling himself there was no need to dig himself in deeper.

"The lamps?" Mahado placed the candle in an alcove, so it threw a faint light over the interior of the cavernous hallway. There was just enough for Malik to make out the priest's shadowy form. "Why are your hands shaking like that?" the priest demanded impatiently. The younger man suspected he already knew the answer to that.

Malik tried to make them stop. "No reason. It was just…unpleasant…being here without a light. That's all."

Mahado scoffed. "You have no-one to blame but yourself, imbecile."

Turning away, Malik found the pile of lamps and bent to gather them up, feeling Mahado's eyes on him the whole time. Taking care not to fumble, he began placing each of them in the alcoves that lined the hall.

_Why would he follow me here?_ Malik wondered to himself. _If he knew I'd make a disaster of this, why ask me to do it at all? _Wishing for nothing more than his own warm bed and the delicious oblivion of sleep, Malik sighed to himself and continued down the hallway. It was that hour of the night; his vision swam slightly, and everything around him seemed a little bit distorted. The sounds of his own footsteps faded in and out. Out of the corner of his eye, Malik watched the carvings and statues that lined the walls of the tomb. He didn't entirely trust them at this moment not to suddenly start moving. Everything about this night was so strange…

Wearily, he put the final lamp in the final alcove. Yawning, he turned to go back and walked straight into something. Something solid…and warm. Blinking, Malik looked up. Mahado was standing right in front of him, gazing down at him with a strange look in his eyes. The younger man looked away quickly, unable to understand his sudden nervousness. _What's wrong with him?_ Something black flew by overhead, and the breeze almost put the flame out. The unsteady gleam of the candlelight threw Malik's fluttering shadow on the floor.

"Shouldn't we be heading back now, sir…?" The words leaving his mouth felt like they belonged to someone else. Mahado didn't move. Malik began to carefully edge out sideways between him and the wall.

"Not so fast." Mahado's hand was on the wall next to him, trapping him there. He gazed down at the younger man with an unpleasant gleam in his eye. "What's your rush?" He was way too close now.

"It's late," Malik stammered, still looking at the ground. "And if there's nothing else you need me to do here…"

"On the contrary," returned Mahado. "There is." With a vague smile, he reached up and ran his fingers through Malik's light-colored hair. The younger man was stock still, barely daring to breathe. "The night is almost spent," the older man murmured. "Why would I go back now?"

Ω

**W**ith a gasp, Malik started in his sleep and jolted back to consciousness. The dream was already fading. His heart, however, was still pounding in his chest, so he lay where he was for a short time and tried to get a hold on himself. It had just been a memory; nothing more. With luck, a memory that would fade with time. He was thankful, at least, that he had woken up when he had. Groggily, Malik forced himself to sit up and rubbed his eyes. He couldn't remember the last time he had slept so well…

With one look at his surroundings, Malik forgot all about the dream. With a queasy sensation in the pit of his stomach, the events of the previous night came flooding back to him – how he and Ishizu had stolen out of the city under cover of darkness, how the Thief King and his band had appeared in the desert amid the thunder of hooves and how he'd been sure they were going to die…and that horrible, dizzying moment when he finally realized Ishizu planned to abandon him there…

This room – if it could be called that – was totally unfamiliar to him. It wasn't really a room so much as a small cave, about the size of one of the servants' bedrooms back in the palace. It was hard to see; there were no windows and the only light was a burning lamp on the other side of the floor. Malik tried not to let it remind him of the dream. The wick of the lamp had diminished to almost nothing, and it cast just enough light for Malik to see the dim outline of the interior of the cave. The rock walls, which were a reddish color, stretched up into dimness. It was impossible to tell how high the ceiling was. He looked down and discovered he was sitting on a beautiful divan, carved of mahogany. Running his fingers over the mysterious golden material of the couch, he was surprised at how silky and luxurious it felt. Where on earth had it come from?

He could just make out a pile of blankets and coverings across from where he now sat. The thought occurred that someone else could also be in this room, and a twinge of cold dread went through him. What if it was one of the thieves? Malik rose to his feet, took the lamp from the floor, and hesitantly walked over to the mountain of blankets. A feeling of relief, like a cool hand on a hot forehead, went through him as the light illuminated the rest of the room and he realized he was indeed alone.

With a sigh, Malik turned away. The room was too quiet. His surroundings felt unreal, as if he would wake up any minute now and Ishizu would be kneeling by his bedside, telling him soothingly he'd only imagined the whole thing. He would still be living with her in the palace, surrounded by servants and watchful guards. The boundless wastes of the desert would be kept safely at bay. Atemu would still smile in his direction every once in a while, and Mahado would still be alive…

A dull golden gleam from the corner of the cave brought Malik back to reality. No wonder – on second glance, the room seemed to be filled with strange treasures. Over there was a marble statue of Anubis, midnight-colored stone polished to a brilliant shine. It was, no doubt, stolen from a temple; here was a chest of palm-wood, full of maps and jewelry and coins of gold and silver. Many of the coins were from faraway lands Malik had only heard of in tales – Nubia, Assyria, Greece…

There were several embalming jars standing off to the side. Malik suspected they had been taken for the opulent jewels that adorned them; he didn't really want to know if they still held their contents. A shudder went through him as he realized that their owners' bodies would probably forever be incomplete; they would be lost souls for eternity. Unless these were returned, they would never be able to gain admittance to the Afterlife. The young man couldn't rip his eyes away from the stolen jars. This one for the liver, that for the heart… It was one thing to steal jewels, but depriving some innocent spirit of Paradise? No matter how he tried to understand, he doubted he would ever be able to understand how someone could commit such a hideous crime. He tried to put it out of his mind.

By the base of the jars were scattered some papyri. Out of habit, Malik knelt and began to straighten up the haphazard pile. It was certainly an eclectic collection of literature – along with the pyramid inscription texts and some pages from the Book of the Dead, there were many spells, hymns and legends. Clearly most if not all had been stolen from tombs; where else would the thieves have gotten access to the texts? The noble frowned as he began to organize the papyri according to content. He couldn't imagine why they would have stolen these papers of all things. Monetarily, they were worth next to nothing, and it was highly unlikely that any of the thieves could read – after all, they were uneducated commoners. Malik yawned and rubbed the remaining sleep from his eyes as he stood up, placing the papyri on top of the chest. They had probably just stolen them to make some kind of point. It was a shame.

He took a step backwards, surveying his work – and almost collided with something. A tall arched harp stood beside the chest, carved of ebony and meticulously inlaid with ivory. The Eye of the Moon was carved into the centerpiece of the harp. The familiar symbol seemed to radiate comfort, with its unspoken promise to keep evil at bay. Captivated by the instrument's unexpected beauty, Malik reached out without thinking and plucked a few of the strings in the first few notes of a lullaby.

The smooth, deep tones sounded out louder than he expected. Worried, he quickly put a hand out to stop the strings from vibrating. Standing stone-still, Malik listened intently for any sign he had been heard. The last thing he wanted was to run into one of the cave's other inhabitants. He was happy to stay here, in this dimly lit dwelling, as long as he could avoid everything. Sleep sounded good again; it would be lovely to just be able to fall asleep and not wake up…

"Hello?" an unfamiliar voice called out. The notes must have carried to the outside of the cave. Malik waited uneasily, listening.

"Come on out of there," said the voice again, after a moment's pause. It didn't sound threatening, exactly. Whoever was speaking was relatively young. There was a lilting quality to the voice that made Malik feel slightly more at ease. After a few moments of feeling around the walls, he had finally managed to locate the way out – there was an opening in the mouth of the cave covered by a thick red curtain that didn't seem to let any light through. _No point in postponing the inevitable anyway,_ he told himself. _If you don't go out, they'll just come in here and find you. _Steeling himself for whatever might come next, Malik took a breath and pushed aside the curtain.

The warm, golden light of late afternoon flooded his vision, and he had to turn away momentarily, covering his eyes. The voice laughed, sounding amused.

"Ah, I forgot. You haven't been out of there in ages. Wait a minute or two, your eyes will adjust."

Bit by bit, Malik's vision returned. An even stranger sight greeted his eyes. He was standing in a much larger, low-ceilinged cave. Around the edges, there were several more small caves, enclaves hollowed out of the rock, like the one he had just come from. All of the openings were covered by curtains or cloths of some sort. It occurred to Malik that these enclaves must be where each of the thieves slept. Vaguely, he wondered whose room he had just been in. Towards the back of the cave, there appeared to be a set of crude steps, leading downward, away out of his field of vision. In the center of the cave was a fire pit, bordered by stones. Around it stood several long wooden benches.

"Done gawking? Come over here." With a start, Malik realized he'd totally forgotten about whoever it was that was out here. Shielding his eyes, he turned towards the mouth of the cave, where the voice was coming from.

The cave opened onto the wide expanse of Sahara desert, blinding in its midday brightness. In the arch of the entranceway sat a man. Malik tentatively drew closer. The man looked up from his work as he heard footsteps approach. He had a shock of messy, curly black hair, and large, searching dark eyes that seemed to hold a hint of sorrow, even though he otherwise seemed looked perfectly happy. He had a pile of knives in his lap and was sharpening the blades, one by one.

"You're finally up!" The man was young – he looked no more than twenty-five, deeply darkened by the sun, with a friendly, reassuring smile that threw the noble off guard.

Malik couldn't help but smile back, despite his nervousness. "I suppose. How long was I asleep?"

"Let me see, that would have been…" Brow furrowed, the thief began to count off on his fingers. "Almost three days. Sleep of the dead, huh? Have a seat."

Gratefully, Malik sat down beside the man. His informal way of speaking, so unfamiliar to the noble, was strangely soothing. "I hadn't slept in about a week," he told the other.

The man glanced over at him, concern and curiosity apparent in his eyes. "I heard you had some kind of trouble with the Pharaoh."

"How did you know?" Malik asked, surprised.

"Akefia mentioned it. He didn't bother to elaborate though. Not that he ever does." The thief shrugged.

Now Malik was lost. "And Akefia is who?"

Hesitating, the thief frowned slightly. "You don't know him? Akefia's the boss around here. I thought you met each other – big, strong guy, bizarre white hair, lots of mood swings…"

"Oh, you mean the Thief King!" Malik exclaimed.

The other man just stared at him blankly for a moment, and then burst out laughing. Unsure, Malik frowned at him. "What's so funny?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing," the thief managed, wiping his eyes. "I'm sure he'll be thrilled to know you call him that." He settled back again and took up another knife blade to sharpen. "He'd better not start telling the rest of us to call him Thief King though," he muttered to himself, "'cause I'm sure as hell not doing it…"

Malik nodded with a smile. Secretly, he was glad he now knew the Thief King's name. Somehow the fact that he _had _a name made him seem less terrifying. In theory, anyway. "What's your name?" he asked the thief suddenly.

"Oh right, I forgot." He smiled, extending a hand. "I'm Zazamoukh. Everybody calls me Zaza. And you are Malik, correct?"

The noble nodded. After a split second of hesitation, he took the thief's hand. "Pleased to meet you."

"Same here." Zazamoukh settled back against the edge of the cave and set aside the blade he'd just finished with. Inexplicably, Malik could feel some of his anxieties lightening. Perhaps this wouldn't be as terrible as he'd thought…

Ah, speaking of which. "Where is, uh…everybody else?"

Zazamoukh raised his eyebrows. "Off on a raid in Edfu. It's my turn to stand guard here. They set off right after Akefia left you here, so they should be back before midnight."

"Back from Edfu?" Malik asked, incredulously. According to Zazamoukh, he had only spent three days in the thieves' den. "Isn't that a week's journey, at least?"

"Not the way Akefia rides. The horses are used to it though." Zazamoukh laughed. "That's why the Pharaoh's men never catch us. Their horses spend all their time standing around and eating, and they still wonder how we get away with it." He turned over the blade he was working on and began sharpening the other side. "I'll admit, back when Aknamkanon was Pharaoh, they used to give us a run for our money every once in a while. But since he died, well…" The thief trailed off.

"It won't last long," Malik interjected. He had no idea why he suddenly felt so confident saying this – the thought hadn't even crossed his mind before that the dynasty might come to an end, but now that he'd given voice to it, it made sense. In the city, rebellion was in the air, rising in hushed whispers and furtive glances from the bazaar and the crowded marketplaces where people gathered.

Zazamoukh grunted. "I wouldn't be surprised. Everybody hates that rotten son of a bitch." The noble knew without asking the thief was referring to Atemu, Aknamkanon's teenage heir.

Malik decided to change the subject. "Did the Thief King happen to mention what exactly it is I'm supposed to be doing around here?"

Zazamoukh grinned. "There you go with that 'Thief King' business again. He didn't say anything about that. Don't worry about it for now, I'm sure he'll find plenty for you to do once he gets back. Take it easy for now."

The two fell into a comfortable silence, the only sound the rasping of Zazamoukh's sharpener against the blade. Ra had descended, and was approaching the horizon. Darkening shades of lavender and orange had begun to spread out against the clear blue sky, and the desert was cooling down. The scorpions and snakes had begun to emerge from their hiding places, and some had started to crawl across the sand, looking for prey.

Malik was staring off into the distance, wondering if Ishizu was all right. The moon had just become visible behind some dissipating clouds on the horizon. He knew she would be praying to Nut right about now.

Suddenly, there was a flash of silver to his right. Malik quickly glanced around to see a twitching scorpion lying not two inches away from him, cut neatly in half, its black blood soaking into the sand. Zazamoukh was wiping off his knife.

"Thank…thank you…" Malik managed to gasp. How had he not even noticed the scorpion? It was huge, it looked to be almost a foot long.

"Don't mention it," said Zazamoukh, nonchalant. "It wouldn't have killed you, but you'd probably have been in bed for about a week. If you're going to be living out here, you'll have to work on your reflexes."

Malik nodded, still in a state of mild shock. Zazamoukh took a minute to gather all the knives into a basket, and then stood up.

"I think it's probably time to go inside," he told Malik. "That is, unless you fancy the idea of being devoured by scorpions before morning." Zazamoukh seemed to think this was very funny. Malik didn't. Glancing about for any more deadly creatures, he hurriedly stood – but immediately a dizzy sensation made his head swim. He lost his balance and would have fallen if Zazamoukh hadn't reached out and caught him as he was about to go down.

"I forgot, you haven't eaten, have you?" asked the thief. Rather than waiting for a reply, he helped Malik back into the cave, supporting him with one arm.

Inside, the noble took a seat on one of the benches in the middle, feeling better as soon as he did so. The thief disappeared into one of the smaller caves and came out a moment later with a bowl of dates. He sat down on the bench next to Malik, placing the dates in the middle. The younger man took one thankfully. Zazamoukh bent, and with a piece of flint, struck up a spark in the pile of dry wood in the stone pit. A moment later, a bright fire was burning merrily.

"You'll have to keep your strength up around here," Zazamoukh told him seriously. "We can't have people fainting left and right."

Malik nodded. The sun was lowering on the horizon, lengthening the flickering shadows inside the cave. If only Ishizu were here. With his sister by his side, anything was bearable, but without her, Malik felt like a shadow himself. He'd never really been without Ishizu before – never been without the promise of a loving embrace, and someone to come home to. He'd promised to Ishizu he would not try to return to the city, where certain death awaited him, but as twisted as it was, he found it hard to restrain the urge to just run out into the evening and face his chances in the desert.

Suddenly, Zazamoukh frowned to himself and got up abruptly, leaving Malik alone by the fireside. He leaned out of the entrance of the cave, and turned his head – silent, listening.

Malik came out as well and joined him. "You hear it?" Zazamoukh asked. He sounded excited. The desert wind swept across miles and miles, yet Malik could hear only silence.

"Nothing."

"Listen! They're coming back." Zazamoukh pointed at the darkening horizon. Malik narrowed his eyes to see better. He was about to protest that there was nothing there, just an empty expanse of sand and a purple sky above it, when a dark point on the horizon came into view.

It looked like a blur at this distance, nothing more, but Malik could tell it was coming closer. It could only be the band of thieves. Suddenly, anxiety tied a queasy knot in his stomach. He wasn't just nervous, he was terrified. Unconsciously, he grabbed Zazamoukh's arm to keep himself from fleeing. The thief looked down at him, surprised, but didn't shrug him off.

With almost inhuman speed, the outlaws were drawing closer. They had to have covered miles in the last few minutes. He could see the black horses now, their hooves a blur, and the shadowy forms of the men astride them.

Malik closed his eyes.

Ω

That's all folks! I feel like the style is more flowery and descriptive than usual. Blame the Victorian Gothic novels I've been reading…

Sorry if it seemed like too much filler or setup, things will start happening over the next chapter and we'll meet the band of thieves! I'm kind of excited, they'll be an interesting bunch. I've been busy with schoolwork (to the point where I don't have time to eat, isn't that sad?) but I will probably update over winter break. Thanks for reading, and I would love it _so_ much if you reviewed. Make me happy?

Comments, criticism, suggestions are all welcome! See you next chapter!


	3. III

I know, it's been forever – I've been extremely busy, but in recompense here's a super-long chapter…17 pages on Word! I worked _insanely_ hard on this, so I hope you like it.

This is where we meet the thieves…they are kind of OCs and kind of not…they were in the series but didn't have any personalities. I like to think I own their souls but not their bodies. Also, Malik is around 18 in this story.

Also, before anyone says anything, yes I know Malik means "king" in Arabic, not Egyptian (and no, they are not the same languages). And, for that matter, it's pronounced ma-_leek_, not _ma_-lik. I'm trying to keep the story as accurate as possible, but dammit Kazuki Takahashi, you could have done your research!

Disclaimer: Don't own Yu-Gi-Oh or any of its characters. I kind of own the thieves though.

Warning: This chapter contains gore, slight silliness, and substance abuse. Be prepared!

ʘ

_With almost inhuman speed, the outlaws were drawing closer. They had to have covered miles in the last few minutes. He could see the black horses now, their hooves a blur, and the shadowy forms of the men astride them. _

_Malik closed his eyes. _

A moment later, the cool desert air was filled with the noise of shouts and greetings, and the heavy panting of the exhausted horses as the thieves reined in their steeds, came to a stop and began to dismount.

A few of the men seemed shaky on their feet, leaning on their imposing black horses and trying to stomp the feeling back into their legs. They must have been riding a long time, Malik realized, probably crossing hundreds of miles of desert with little to no sleep. The horses, too, backs heaving, had been pushed almost to breaking point – in addition to the men astride them, they had had to carry heavy loads of stolen goods, packed into chests which the thieves were just beginning to unstrap and take down. One man, who wore a black scarf tied around his head, made a melodramatic show of fainting into a taller one's arms. He failed to amuse, however, and was promptly shoved back onto his feet. Another thief, with curly hair and a full beard, had barely dismounted when his legs gave out under him and he had to cling onto his horse to keep from falling.

But one thief stood tall and majestic as ever. His back was to the young noble as he stroked his fatigued stallion outside the cave, but Malik recognized the slightly disheveled crimson robe that billowed around his feet and the wind-blown hair, moon colored and as wild and untamable as lunacy itself. The deep voice was booming out orders, strong and clear as a bell. The shadows of his form blended with the deepening shades of evening, so it was difficult to tell where the man ended and the sand and rock began. Without knowing why, Malik retreated behind Zazamoukh back into the cave.

"Three days! I think you beat your last record," Zazamoukh called out happily.

The Thief King turned, lithe and graceful as a panther. Malik's stomach did a strange flip at the sight of the man – dreaded and awaited for what seemed a short eternity. It was obvious he had been riding long; he had deep shadows under his eyes from lack of sleep and he looked exhausted. At the sight of Zazamoukh however, not a smirk but a real smile, rare and brilliant, appeared on his face.

"You think? You mean you weren't timing us?" Zazamoukh didn't have time to reply to this before the Thief King had caught him up in a tight embrace.

"I was so bored," the black-haired thief said after Akefia had let him go, "I thought I was going to die."

"I can't leave you alone for three days…"

"There was nobody to talk to!" Zazamoukh jerked a thumb behind him, in Malik's general direction. "This one was out like a light until about two hours ago."

The Thief King laughed and slung an arm around his shoulders, and they and the rest of the band began to make their way into the cave, where most of the men instantly migrated to the fireside. Malik was still standing by the side of the archway, unobserved, willing himself to melt back into the shadows. The flickering flames drew his gaze, and mesmerized, he found himself watching the rippling of the thieves' muscles under battle-scarred skin, and their sharp daggers that gleamed in the firelight.

Someone spoke in front of him, jolting him out of his reverie.

"Well, hello again, Majesty," said the deep voice. "Did you miss me?" Malik looked up to see the Thief King standing before him, looking down at him, arms crossed over his chest. That familiar teasing smile played across his face, the white canines gleaming in the firelight. The jagged triple scar below his right eye was almost white against his skin. He tilted his head slightly as he gazed down at Malik, as if the other were some kind of rare bird that amused him endlessly, caught in a cage and his to do with as he pleased. The other thieves had noticed him by now, muttering and looking around at him curiously. Malik was on unfamiliar ground. His heart was pounding, and his throat suddenly felt dry. He felt like he was in the middle of a foreign land where he didn't speak the language, caught in a game to which no-one had told him the rules.

But before Malik could force himself to say something in reply, the Thief King had suddenly fallen silent, a troubled look on his face. His gaze had moved somewhere beyond Malik, out of the mouth of the cave. Grateful for the distraction, Malik turned to see what it was he was looking at.

"GET DOWN!" Akefia shouted, and flung himself on top of Malik, pinning him to the ground. A shout went up, and the rest of the thieves hit the floor just as a volley of arrows sailed overhead.

Malik just had time to notice how interesting the faint whining noise they made was as they passed, before what was happening had sunk in and a sickening, fainting feeling went through him. Above him, he could hear Akefia's breaths, heavy and harsh, anger tinted with the color of fear.

The arrows struck the back of the cave wall and clattered to the ground harmlessly. None had found their targets. There was an anxiety-loaded silence.

"The Pharaoh's men?" one of the thieves dared to ask.

Akefia nodded and swore furiously. He was still glaring in the same direction, his grey eyes flashing with rage. Malik shivered, petrified, hardly daring to breathe for fear he might make some sound. He didn't know which he was more terrified of – the dangerous man on top of him, or the Pharaoh's approaching henchmen.

Malik could not have moved if he tried; Akefia had pinned him down. His arms enclosed Malik on either side, forming a cage, and the warmth of his body caused the younger man to move slightly closer, unconsciously, due less to the coldness of the evening and more to the panic that threatened to seize hold of him. He noticed he could feel the thud of Akefia's heartbeat, and realized he felt lightheaded with something very close to terror.

In the heavy silence, the crunch of the intruders' advancing footsteps and their hushed voices seemed very loud. In spite of himself, Malik let out a faint gasp.

"Do not make a sound," Akefia suddenly bent and whispered in his ear. His breath was warm, and his voice was deadly serious. "They want your head as well as ours. Do you understand?" Their eyes met briefly, their faces inches apart, and Malik felt goosebumps run down his spine. He nodded quickly to show he understood.

Akefia gave a low two-note whistle, his eyes fixed on the approaching enemies. One of the thieves stole up to the arch on the other side. His skin was much darker than the rest, a rich mahogany brown, and his hair hung in long braids down his back. He crouched by the entryway silently, amber eyes fixed on Akefia, awaiting directions. After a tense moment, Akefia met the other thief's gaze and gave a slight nod.

As silently as the stars coming out, the thief unsheathed his dagger. He rose to his feet gracefully and with one fluid motion, had raised his arm and thrown the blade at an unseen target. Malik heard the dull _thwuck_ of a knife burying itself in flesh, a strangled, gurgling cry, and a moment later, the muffled sound of a body falling heavily on sand. Malik flinched and bit his lip to keep from crying out.

In the blink of an eye, two more knives had been thrown; two more bodies had fallen, and the Pharaoh's men had been forever silenced.

Malik did not realize he had been clutching onto Akefia's shoulders the whole time until the Thief King looked down at him again, eyebrows raised.

"Want to release me anytime soon, Majesty?"

Malik felt his face grow hot and forced himself to let go of Akefia, purposely looking away.

The Thief King rose to his feet and approached the entryway. Though he drank in the sight with a smile of satisfaction, his eyes still contained a hard glint of fury.

"Well done, Nefermaat," he muttered.

The knife-thrower grinned, revealing a flash of white teeth. "Nothing but the best." His soft voice was slightly accented.

Malik scrambled to his feet and drew near to the entryway cautiously, curious to see what had transpired.

On the sand before them, a good hundred yards away, three bodies lay, still as statues. The sand below them was darkened with what could only be blood. The daggers had hit two in the throat, and one in the heart. Their hair was matted with gore, their faces frozen in a ghastly rictus of death. The starry night sky reflected in their sightless eyes.

Suddenly feeling sick, Malik turned away.

Behind him, the bearded thief had picked up one of the fallen arrows from the floor. Studying it, he put the tip in his mouth cautiously. "Poisoned."

Akefia spat viciously on the ground and turned back into the cave. "Teti-En!"

The thief with the black bandana joined Akefia's side. "Yes?"

"See if they've got anything worthwhile on them."

Teti-En glanced at the bloody scene. "What about the bodies?"

"Just get them out of the way," Akefia said, sounding bored. "The sand will cover them soon enough."

ʘ

Ishizu watched the shadows on the wall grow, lengthening into strange and unfamiliar shapes as the sun outside her window went down. The darkening sky was heavy with clouds that the wind dispersed every now and then to reveal a crescent-shaped moon, a thin sliver that was almost invisible.

A cold breeze blew in through the window and lifted her hair. Ishizu lay in her bed, willing sleep to come. She had been secluded in her chambers for the past few days.

The guards had rushed her to the infirmary as soon as the Thief King was gone. She scoffed inwardly, recalling the over-fastidious way the attendants had brushed off her garments and inspected her bruises, as if it was impossible for a delicate noblewoman such as herself to survive a slight fall without lasting damage. She knew they only fussed over her for appearance's sake.

And it was for appearance's sake that she had invented various maladies, imbalances of the humor, aches and pains and fatigue – for Ishizu knew that should she come out unscathed from her ordeal with the Thief King, unwelcome questions would be sure to follow. She had been advised to take several days to rest and recover before resuming her duties.

The official story that Ishizu had recounted on her return, was that she had been alone in the temple, praying to Isis for guidance, when a man had come up behind her and stifled her cries for help. It had turned out to be the Thief King, and he had stolen her away outside of the city walls where he had robbed her of all her jewelry and money. He had been about to kill her, but when Ishizu pleaded for her life, he had relented on the condition that she offer a sacrifice to Anubis in his name. He had then returned her to the city, shoving her into the hands of the guards before disappearing into thin air like so much smoke. The first question on everyone's lips when they heard the story, of course, was whether he had left her honor intact. Ishizu had drawn herself to her full height and assured them, deadly serious, that he had not, she would have taken her own life rather than return to the Pharaoh's city.

It was a good story, and Ishizu was proud of it. She was almost sure Atemu would believe it. High Priest Seth, with his tendency to think the worst of people, would almost certainly assume the thief's request for a sacrifice was a mockery of some sort, and become outraged. The suspicious eye of the law would move away from her, and Malik would be kept safe. With luck, they would not realize until much later that he was, in fact, no longer hiding within the city walls.

She had not fallen ill at all, in truth, and as a result, the past three days of being isolated in her room had had bad results. Ishizu was not a woman who was used to boredom, and the overwhelming tedium and worry of recent days had gnawed at her mind. Bad dreams plagued her every night, and during the day her mind seemed to race, looping in on itself with unfamiliar questions and nagging self-doubts. The solicitous servants that came every so often bearing food and medicine just made it worse, with their soft and soothing voices and their quiet, timid footsteps. Ishizu had always clung to her honesty, and the fact she had a secret to keep now was eating away at her – like everything else. She watched herself now from the outside, as if in a dream.

There was a faint noise at the door. Ishizu closed her eyes and feigned sleep. Soft footsteps drew nearer, as a cautious maid entered her chamber, left a full pitcher of water by her bedside, and then withdrew.

Eventually, Ishizu knew, she would have to stand before Atemu and explain everything that had happened. She would have to claim she didn't know where Malik was. She would have to bow to Atemu, and tell him loyally that if she did know, she would not hesitate to betray her own brother to the Pharaoh's justice. She would say, sounding sure of herself, that Malik's eternal soul was damned for what he had done. She would have to still her furiously beating heart, banish the tears from her eyes, and lie through gritted teeth. She did not look forward to that day. Until then, she would remain here, slowly recovering and watching the shadows on the walls.

But the palace foundations could crumble around her, and she wouldn't care, for in her heart of hearts, somehow she knew that her brother was safe. And so Ishizu lay where she was, and waited for sleep to come.

ʘ

It was later that night, and all the thieves had gathered around the fire. With a celebration in mind, Zazamoukh had slaughtered a camel, which was now roasting over the flames. It had had to be eviscerated, and cut up in pieces, since it was too large. Zazamoukh had offered to show Malik how this was done, but five minutes into the butchering process he had grown nauseous and excused himself, much to the thief's amusement. Nobody else had thus far taken much notice of him, beyond the occasional curious glance. He was not inclined to complain. He found it somewhat difficult to believe he was still alive, after the most recent threat. Akefia, Malik knew, had saved his life. The thieves all seemed sure the henchmen had found their hideout due to sheer dumb luck. They would have known if they had been followed.

Malik was now seated next to Zazamoukh. The other seven had arranged themselves in a ring around the fire, and were now passing around date-wine quite liberally. Stories were spun and jokes were told all around him, but Malik found himself unable to concentrate; his gaze always fell back to the camel, or rather, whatever part of it Zazamoukh had hacked off. Although he had eaten nothing but a date or two all day, he found himself without an appetite. In the palace, food had always arrived prepared. One didn't need to think about where it had come from, or who had had the grisly job of killing it. Whenever he looked at the meat now, an unbidden image would come to mind of Zazamoukh elbow-deep in gore. In some corner of his mind, Malik was aware he needed desperately to acclimate to this unwanted change; otherwise he would soon starve to death.

Akefia, across from Malik, was busy recounting an elaborate tale which had Zazamoukh's full attention. It was something to do with a prostitute on a rooftop who had tried to steal something only to have it stolen back from her and had somehow, by the manipulation of various ropes, ended up hanging by her feet in front of a tavern door. The mechanics of the whole thing sounded somewhat implausible, but then again, it was not a situation in which Malik had a great deal of personal experience.

"She was lucky to have escaped with her life," Akefia told them offhandedly. "For all I know she's still there. If I ever see her again, she'll have the wits not to try to steal something from the Thief King a second time."

"_If_ she doesn't go running in the opposite direction," observed Zazamoukh.

"I tie them up for a reason, you know," Akefia replied mildly, and took a drink.

Zazamoukh rolled his eyes as the rest of the group exploded with laughter. Malik was faintly troubled by the idea that nobody had rescued the unlucky prostitute, but reassured himself that Akefia had been exaggerating. Probably.

Surreptitiously, Malik looked around at the men, grouped in a circle around the fire. They had struck terror into his heart that night. He vividly remembered how they had surrounded him and Ishizu, cloaked in black, unspeaking, ethereal and menacing as phantoms. Up close, illuminated by firelight, they were revealed as the human beings they were, no longer creatures of the night, but flesh and blood.

The one with the headscarf, eyes half-lidded, was sitting next to Akefia, legs crossed. He was smoking what appeared to be opium out of a pipe, blowing intricate smoke rings that linked with each other in impossibly complex patterns, and then dissolved into the air. A tall one, his hair pulled back in a ponytail, took a drink and grimaced. Next to him was the thief with the beard, who appeared to be tinkering with the crossbows that had been retrieved from the bodies. They were somewhat alarming pieces of newfangled weaponry, able to hold five arrows at a time. Malik and Zazamoukh sat side by side, the latter's eyes dancing as he listened to the stories of the adventure he'd missed out on. Next to him was one thief who seemed to be smaller than the rest. His chin was on his hand, and he appeared to have fallen asleep sitting up. Malik saw by the movements of his eyes beneath their lids that he was dreaming. Next to the dreamer sat a man who was somewhat older, with sharp features and lank hair, who was writing something down on a papyrus. Every so often he would covertly glance around at the rest. And on Akefia's other side sat the knife thrower, his hands occupied with some kind of carving. He was now continuing the story, barely looking at what his hands were doing, eyes dancing with remembered excitement as he described how they'd gotten past the guards in Edfu.

Yet, even when he was silent, one man was in command. Like a magnet, he was the unconscious center of energy, inspiring respect and dread wherever he went. He was the single voice that rose above the others, the loner in the crowd, the enigma, the consuming fire. It was in the curl of his lips and the angle of his jaw, his deliberate movements and his lazy smile, how he moved in the world as if he possessed it, down to the last grain of sand. Before him, one was as hypnotized and as helpless as a gazelle before the killing blow, paralyzed with awe. The Thief King carried himself with an imperial composure even the Pharaoh could not muster. His grey eyes, somehow both haughty and impassive, brought to mind the amaranthine gaze of the Great Sphinx at Giza. Where Malik tiptoed apologetically, the Thief King strode tall, proud and defiant. And when he laughed, he laughed as if he'd put a joke over on the entire universe.

Saddened for a reason he could not name, Malik let his gaze drift back to the fire. The white-hot tongues of flame licked the air, casting quivering shadows on the cave walls and on the faces of the men who sat talking. Their voices seemed muffled. Smoke diffused into the heavy air, fracturing the dim light.

A vision, begotten of memory, came to mind - the ceremonial fires at the palace burning sandalwood, releasing a sweet, perfumed fog into the twilit air of the wide-open courtyards. Malik knew he would never see those fires, those courtyards, those evenings again, and some part of his soul cried out like a wounded animal. Someone threw a ragged cloth into the fire which was quickly consumed by the blaze, blackening and finally disappearing in a burst of sparks.

"You, Majesty!" And Malik returned to reality.

Akefia grinned at him on the other side of the fire and leaned forward. "Lost in dreamland?"

Malik shook his head, hoping to avoid attracting any extra attention. Akefia, it seemed, had exactly the opposite intentions. The rest of the band had fallen silent by this time.

"I realize this place must be quite a shock, coming from the Palace. I regret that I don't have any feather pillows or slave girls to offer you," Akefia continued, "but I trust that otherwise, you have found my hospitality satisfactory?"

What was Malik supposed to say? Still watching him, the Thief King raised an eyebrow. The young man had been put on a very uncomfortable spot. He had no doubt the outlaws considered his background privileged and sheltered. No matter what he said now, he'd be playing into the Thief King's joke. It was just as well; Malik found that his tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of his mouth. When Akefia stared at him like that, he felt like an ant transfixed by the gaze of the hot sun, unable to take a breath for fear.

The silence dragged on. Finally, Akefia gave a despairing sigh and glanced around the circle.

"Will someone please teach the boy how to talk?"

A collective snicker rose from the group. Malik felt a reply suddenly spring unbidden to mind and bit his lip – knowing that anything he said right now would not reflect well on him. The noble was better schooled than most at holding his tongue.

The boy seemed to shiver slightly, and it occurred to Akefia that he might be hungry. The Thief King wrenched a still-bloody leg off the camel and offered it to Malik.

"Come on, have some. It's delicious."

"Killed it myself," Zazamoukh volunteered proudly, as if this would enhance the flavor.

Malik politely shook his head. The Thief King regarded him disparagingly, then shrugged and took a ravenous bite out of the camel leg. Still chewing, he contemplated it thoughtfully before turning his gaze back to Malik. Next to his thieves, who by and large were tall and muscular, strengthened by countless hours of riding and hard labour, the noble's body looked practically like a child's. It would never do.

"Eat _some_thing, would you?" Akefia muttered. "You're too small."

And Malik's restrained irritation boiled over.

Never had a boy been so happy to hit puberty as Malik Ishtar. His entire childhood, he had been undersized and sickly. None of the other palace kids wanted to play with him, as their games usually involved running around outside, as well as various random and unprovoked acts of violence. Malik was skilled at none of these things. Ishizu, sensing that he felt left out, had attempted to make him feel better by forbidding him to play with them anyway. She had assumed this would instill in him a sense of superiority.

Needless to say, it hadn't worked.

So it was that Malik spent a somewhat lonely childhood, mostly indoors, accompanied by books. Once he was about thirteen, he noticed (to his delight) that he was growing taller at an alarming rate, not to mention stronger. His voice, alas, had not gotten much deeper. To anyone but him, it was obvious he had remained on the scrawny side, but as this was a sensitive topic, anyone who knew Malik well knew enough to avoid saying anything on the matter.

The Thief King did not know Malik well.

"I am _not too small._" The noble's voice rose dangerously. Seven heads turned. Interested, the Thief King raised his eyebrows. _Well, well. It seems I've discovered a touchy subject. What fun._

"For your information," Malik continued, his voice sharp, "I am a very normal height for my age and anyone who says otherwise is simply wrong. Furthermore, I _have a name_. _Not_ 'Majesty'." So far he had managed to keep from yelling.

"And," he finished, chest heaving, "I _don't_ need to be taught how to speak, because I already _can_." He folded his arms angrily. "Egyptian, Phoenician and Greek."

There was another silence, even more uncomfortable than the first. Almost as soon as he'd finished talking, Malik regretted ever having opened his mouth. Every single thief in the cave was staring at him incredulously. Every single thief, that was, except for the Thief King himself. If he was surprised at all, it didn't show. He was beaming at Malik approvingly, as if the noble was a pet that had successfully learned a new trick.

"Thank you for finally coming to your own defense, Majesty." Akefia chuckled. "I would be honored if you would grace us with your dulcet tones more often. Although I must warn you in the future to be careful when you contradict me." So it happened the boy was quite the little spitfire after all. Not bad. This was turning out to be more intriguing than he'd thought.

"You speak Greek?" asked one of the thieves, sounding impressed in spite of himself.

The boy was blushing now, looking away and seemed to be thoroughly determined not to say anything more. The Thief King nodded to Malik, and raised a jewel-studded goblet of wine.

"Filotêsi'an propi'nô, anax," he said with a wink, and tipped it back.

A couple of the thieves looked to each other, confused. Malik blinked, wondering if he'd heard the man right. Where on earth would the Thief King have picked up Greek?

The Thief King threw the camel bone on the fire, cleared his throat and looked around, commanding the attention of his men.

"I would like to extend to you a warm welcome on behalf of myself and all those gathered here," he said. Malik suspected it would have felt warmer if not for the somewhat wolfish look in Akefia's eyes.

"It seems I have been remiss in my duties as a host," the Thief King continued. "For this, I hope you will forgive me, Majesty." He inclined his head towards Malik. "I have neglected the introductions, but that will soon be remedied."

Akefia indicated the thief with the headscarf to his left, who was absentmindedly blowing another smoke ring. "This is Teti-En, our resident magician."

"That's me," Teti-En replied. He was in his mid-twenties, a somewhat peculiar looking man with unusually light green eyes and a lopsided smile. He wore a single earring, in the shape of an ankh. "Just wish on a camel bone and I'll make your wildest dreams come true. Hell, I can even throw in a pair of sandals if you want." He nodded to Malik. "Looks like you could use a pair."

Malik was lost. The man made no sense at all. Was it a cryptic message in some kind of code? Was he really a magician? After a moment of hesitation, he replied. "Pleased to meet you."

"Well, you two will have loads to talk about, won't you?" the Thief King interjected jovially. "After all, you're both members of the priest class. Although, I daresay you wound up here due to rather different circumstances, eh?"

Astounded, Malik did a double take. Could it be true? The man didn't seem like a noble, but appearances were often deceptive. He had assumed that all the thieves would naturally be commoners, but the thought that there might be another person here from a similar background was profoundly reassuring. Malik waited for Akefia to explain what he meant by 'different circumstances', but he didn't. Instead, he turned his attention to the thief next to Teti-En.

"This is Kawab. He's from Lower Egypt," Akefia informed Malik, "but as far as Northerners go, he's a decent enough fellow."

Kawab shook his head and grinned. He was young, only a few years older than Malik, by the looks of it, with an open, friendly face and dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. He was handsome in a burly, masculine way – the kind of man Malik knew women went crazy over. He waved to Malik, who waved back.

"Despite his young age," the Thief King went on, "this man has been on quite a few adventures. He was even in the Pharaoh's barracks school for a while, if you can believe that."

Kawab flushed and muttered something about how that was a long time ago.

"Well, lucky for you they kicked you out, eh? Otherwise I probably would have killed you by now."

Everyone around the fire laughed, even though it was clear that the Thief King was only half joking. Akefia grinned and offered Kawab a bottle of wine, which he accepted. Despite his show of good humor, however, a flash of irritation on Kawab's part was obvious. It was evident to Malik that he did not appreciate the Thief King bringing up his past.

Akefia had moved on to the next man, who was sitting between Kawab and Malik. He had temporarily given up on the crossbows, which lay by his feet.

"This is Aminadav," the Thief King told Malik. "I wonder if you've run into each other before."

The man sitting next to Malik didn't look familiar. He was perhaps thirty, with a beard and longish curly hair. His eyes were dark and kind, and unlike the rest of the thieves, he wore no jewelry, save a small silver ring on a chain around his neck.

"I'm from your city," Aminadav explained. His voice was low and quiet. Malik realized after a moment that the man spoke with a Hebrew accent.

Akefia saw the knowledge dawn in Malik's eyes. The thieves den was different from the palace in countless respects, but one distinction stood out. Akefia made damn sure there were none of the hierarchies and mindless caste divisions that were taken for granted among the nobles. Under Akefia's command, each man was treated equally and judged according to his skills – nothing more and nothing less. Akefia didn't know if his new charge would acclimate to this or not, but as far as he was concerned, Malik didn't really have a choice.

"He used to be one of the Pharaoh's slaves," Akefia went on. "I doubt you would have seen him around the palace, though. He worked in the limestone quarries, hacking out blocks to make our illustrious Pharaoh's tomb." There was a hard edge of anger in his voice.

Aminadav took the bottle from Kawab, and as he turned slightly, Malik caught a glimpse of his back. It was heavy with scars, accumulated over the course of many lashings. Some were so deep Malik realized the man had probably been in danger of bleeding to death. A weight of guilt seemed to settle on Malik's chest, even though, he knew, his own family had never owned a bondservant. Of course, in some corner of his mind he'd been aware of the situation with the Hebrew slaves. But how often had he let it bother him? Had he ever even exchanged words with one before? He couldn't remember.

Aminadav turned back to Malik and smiled reassuringly. A lump rose in the noble's throat.

"Can I ask why you left?" he found himself asking. The sound of his own voice surprised him.

Aminadav met Akefia's eyes briefly. It seemed that he had been expecting the question.

"That is a story for another day, I think," he told Malik, with a sad smile.

Malik realized he had probably overstepped his bounds. "I'm sorry," he murmured.

"Don't apologize, my friend," Aminadav told him. "For now, let us drink and be merry."

"Hear, hear," said Teti-En.

Malik looked up to see Akefia studying him, and got the strange feeling he had just passed some kind of test.

A horse neighed outside. The knife-thrower must have recognized it as his, for he shook the braids back from his face and rose to his feet. He muttered something to Akefia, then turned and left the mouth of the cave, presumably to check on his steed.

"Don't I get an introduction?" Zazamoukh asked, tactfully changing the subject.

"No," replied Akefia, without blinking an eye.

"Why not?" Zaza sounded offended, but Malik could tell he was hiding a smile.

"He already knows who you are, doesn't he? I have no time to waste."

"So everyone gets a fancy introduction but me?" Zaza frowned. "That's not fair."

The Thief King shrugged, nonchalant. "Life's not fair."

"You do realize that in the time we've been arguing about this, you could have - "

Akefia cleared his throat, effectively cutting off the other thief. "Dear Majesty," he began, addressing Malik, "please meet Zazamoukh. He talks enough for five men with little to no prompting. You can just sit there and he'll provide hours of entertainment. I'm sure you two will be fast friends."

Despite Akefia's flippant tone, Malik could hear the affection in his voice. A strange mixture of comfort, longing and sadness rose in his chest, akin to watching a wedding between two strangers. The men that surrounded him were turning out to be quite different than he'd expected. Yet, as always, he felt a wall separating him from the others, a wall he doubted he would ever break out from. Although his presence was acknowledged, it only made the discomfort of being the outsider even more excruciating. Not for the first time, Malik reflected on how much more enjoyable life would be if he could become invisible – sparing others his presence, and able to observe unwatched.

Akefia had turned his attention to the man at Zazamoukh's side, who had woken at some point during the introductions and was looking around groggily.

"Good evening, Siamun," said Akefia. "Did you have a nice dream?"

Siamun nodded, and yawned hugely. He was around the same size as Malik, and possibly even an inch or so shorter, but it was hard to tell sitting down. He had close-cropped dark hair, and wide-set , liquid eyes that were uncannily large and deeply shadowed, giving him the appearance of a chronic insomniac. When he met Malik's eyes, the noble had the eerie sense that Siamun could see through him, somehow reading his mind. It was impossible to tell how old he was.

"Excellent. Majesty, this is Siamun, our scout. I'm sure you'll get on famously. He's an even better conversationalist than you, I daresay." At this, most of the men burst out laughing.

Akefia frowned and counted off something on his fingers. "I think he's said about four words this week so far. Am I right?"

Siamun smirked and held up two fingers.

Zazamoukh gasped. "Another record broken!"

"Impossible," Akefia replied, unfazed. "I never overestimate anything."

"Hang on," said Kawab. "If I remember right, he said 'goodbye' to Zazamoukh before we left…"

Siamun nodded.

"…and the first night in Edfu he said 'guards' when he'd spotted them up ahead."

Another nod, the smirk growing.

"And then he said 'guards' again twice the next night, because we almost ran into them again, and then we _did _run into them at the Temple of Horus," Kawab finished, sounding proud of himself.

"So he said two words, four times," Zazamoukh summarized.

"In that case, the record remains unbroken," Aminadav ventured. Malik was following the argument, with some effort.

Akefia glanced at the man to Siamun's left, who was still absorbed with his notes. "What do you think, Mekhu?"

Mekhu looked up from where he was writing on his papyrus and smiled politely. Malik noticed that the smile didn't quite reach his eyes. He was lean, with a hungry look about him. While most of the other thieves were wearing simple kilts, Mekhu was dressed in a tunic. He looked to be somewhere in his thirties. His mustache was neatly groomed, and his keen-featured face betrayed a detached sophistication.

"It really depends on how you define a word, I suppose," he returned, after a moment's pause. "Whether you take it to mean a discrete part of speech, in which case two is the correct answer, or whether it is an individual utterance, in which case it would be four."

"Meet our treasurer, Majesty," said Akefia. "A top-notch logician, and undoubtedly the finest mind for numbers in all Egypt."

"You honor me," replied Mekhu, "but many are possessed of skills far superior to mine." His voice was articulate and even, betraying no emotion.

"He's modest too! Mekhu has the distinction of being the only family man here," Akefia informed Malik. "As such, he is frequently away on personal business. So don't get too attached to him, he'll only break your heart."

Mekhu laughed a little uncomfortably.

"Put away those papers for once and have a drink," the Thief King urged. "Or would the little woman disapprove?"

A guarded look passed over Mekhu's face like a cloud, and then was gone. "Not at all," he returned, thanking Zazamoukh who passed him a bottle. Malik vaguely wondered if the wine was ever going to run out. Somehow he doubted it.

"So, Malik," Mekhu said conversationally. "Now you've been filled in on the vital details where we're concerned. But we still don't know anything about you." He regarded Malik with slight disdain, as if he suspected information were being purposely withheld. Malik didn't like the way his name sounded on Mekhu's lips, as if it were an alias. A murmur rose around the fire, and any flicker of comfort Malik may have felt was promptly extinguished.

"What do you want to know?" he replied, steeling himself.

"Well, since we're being direct," Mekhu replied, steepling his fingers and leaning forward, "I think we'd all like to know exactly what it is that brings you here." The murmur subsided, and then vanished. "I'm aware of your…altercation with the priest. However, I remain ignorant as to why and how it came about. We have no secrets here."

Malik could feel expectant eyes watching him, waiting for his reply. His throat felt dry. What was he going to say? His mind was suddenly empty of words.

Akefia noticed the all-too-familiar way Malik's eyes suddenly dilated in fear, how his thin shoulders trembled almost imperceptibly, how he sat up a little straighter, the knuckles of his hands white with tension.

"I…" Malik began, and then broke off. He couldn't even bring himself to think about that night. How would he begin to explain himself? "I…I didn't…"

"I suspect this is something else better left for another day." Malik looked up sharply when Akefia spoke, his tone suddenly cool. The smile had vanished.

"Akefia, do not be rash," Mekhu protested, his irritation obvious. "We have no way of knowing - "

"Do not challenge me. Leave it alone." Akefia's voice was dangerously soft.

As if on cue, the cacophony rose as the rest of the thieves resumed their conversations as if nothing had happened. Teti-En lost his flint; Aminadav carved off a piece of camel.

Under the din of voices, Malik was just able to make out Akefia's words, voice lowered to a venomous hiss.

"Next time, dear friend, I would thank you to remember who takes orders from whom."

In one moment, spiteful ire rose in Mekhu's eyes, and in the next his face had become a mask again, calm and flat as a stagnant pool.

"As you wish, Akefia."

Mekhu took up his stylus and papyrus, and rose to his feet. He turned to Malik.

"I must ride now. I offer my apologies if I have in any way offended your sensibilities," he said levelly. The corner of his mouth twisted in a smile as he looked down at the noble; both he and Malik knew the apology was insincere. "I realize I do not know your full name."

Briefly, Malik wondered why this would matter. "Malik Ishtar," he told him. After a moment, he extended his hand.

Mekhu grasped his hand for a fleeting second, and then let it go. Despite the fact he had been sitting by the fire, his hand was cold. "Until we meet again, Malik Ishtar."

Mekhu nodded briefly to Akefia, then turned and silently departed from the cave. A few of the thieves called out farewells, but Mekhu made no sign that he heard them. Akefia watched him leave, following him with his eyes until he disappeared outside into the night.

At that moment, the knife-thrower chose to return, passing Mekhu as he left the cave. He glanced after the older man curiously, then made his way back to the fire.

"What's wrong with Camel Face now?" he asked, indicating the cave entrance. "He looks like somebody just pissed all over his homework."

The tense mood was broken, and everyone burst out laughing. Even Malik couldn't suppress a smile.

"His Highness's feathers got ruffled," Teti-En commented sarcastically.

"Ooh, sorry I missed it," said the knife-thrower. He made himself comfortable in the spot Mekhu had just vacated and took up his carving once more. "Remember that time his horse got poisoned and he had to ride that broken-down nag all the way from Memphis?"

The thief began to recount the tale. Malik realized he still didn't know the man's name.

"Who's he?" Malik whispered to get Zazamoukh's attention. He indicated the knife-thrower, next to Akefia. The man was gesturing animatedly with his carving knife, amber eyes flashing as he continued the tale of Mekhu's offended dignity.

"Him? That's Nefermaat," Zazamoukh replied, and lowered his voice, leaning in closer to Malik. "He was an assassin in Nubia. The best man in Africa with a blade, if the tales I've heard are true."

"He's from Nubia?" That would explain his exotic appearance. Despite all the stories Malik had heard of the land to the south of Egypt, he had never actually met anyone from there. "What is he doing here, then?"

Zaza gave a short laugh, as if the story was one that never failed to amaze him. "He took a contract on the Crown Prince of Nubia a few years ago. He carried out his end of the bargain, but the vizier who hired him ratted him out almost immediately. The entire Sudan was thrown into chaos, and he had to leave the country. The price on his head keeps going up. And as far as I know, there's still a civil war going on down there. I'll let him tell you that whole story sometime."

Zazamoukh fell into an introspective silence. Malik considered this. Vaguely, he remembered once overhearing Atem and Seth talking about the 'situation' in Nubia, but until now, he had never known exactly what had been going on.

He yawned, and realized, with no small amazement, that he was growing sleepy again. Malik looked around the circle to see if the gathering showed any signs of dying down, and with a jolt, realized that Nefermaat was staring straight at him. He held Malik's gaze and did not look away. Malik's first, panicked thought was that somehow Nefermaat had overheard his conversation with Zazamoukh. He was sure the man would be angry, possibly even furious – but then, unexpectedly, he smiled.

Slowly, the thief's obvious gaze travelled down over Malik's body, roaming over his exposed chest and narrow hips, lingering on his outstretched legs. Malik hurriedly crossed them. Nefermaat raised his eyes to meet Malik's once more and, as if he had all the time in the world, tilted his head knowingly, as if asking a question he already was sure of the answer to.

Malik's lavender eyes widened, and he looked away, nervous, his heart pounding. Thoroughly unsettled, he crossed his arms over his chest, feeling exposed and suddenly self-conscious. When he dared to look back at Nefermaat, the man was, to his relief, involved in a discussion with Kawab and Akefia. Malik resolved to avoid him in the future. He was so tense he jumped slightly when Zazamoukh nudged his shoulder.

"You look cold," Zazamoukh observed. "Put this on."

Malik realized he was holding a tunic, made of once-white linen that had been lying under the bench. Surprised, he stuttered his thanks and hurriedly put it on.

"That thing's huge on you," Zazamoukh said critically, more to himself than to Malik. Indeed, the sleeves extended well past Malik's hands, and the hem reached slightly below his knees. The neckline was also too big, and kept falling off one shoulder. He looked like a child, floundering about in its parents' oversized clothing. Nevertheless, Malik was very pleased with the tunic.

"This is great," he told Zazamoukh simply. For the first time that evening, a wide smile found its way to Malik's face.

There was no way he could have known of the resulting surge of affection in Zazamoukh's heart at the sight of the smile, or how from that day onward, he resolved to look out for Malik and protect him like the little brother he'd never had.

There was also no way he could have known how, on the other side of the fire, Nefermaat was silently laughing to himself. The boy's face was an open book of emotion. First had come curiosity, then surprise as their eyes met, fear, bewilderment, followed by indignation as the gaze had roamed south…then came anxiety and self-consciousness as he had met the boy's eyes again. The boy had looked away then, hoping to dismiss the entire thing, but there was no missing the way he visibly relaxed after donning the outsized garment. Only a temporary obstruction, Nefermaat thought to himself before turning his attention to more immediate matters.

And there was no way Malik could have guessed that yet someone else was thinking of him at that moment too. More specifically, thinking about how enchantingly pretty that smile was. But this thought was only there for a moment, before the thinker banished it and began wondering how to steal that smile, how to lock it away like a butterfly in a jar, and keep it only for himself.

ʘ

Any guesses as to what Akefia says in Greek?

Happy New Year! Please please please review?


	4. IV

This is late. I apologize – I rewrote it more times than you care to know. College is eating up all my time. "I drink to your health, king," is what Akefia says in Greek, and I can't answer more questions than that (at least not yet!)

I realized I forgot to thank everybody for reviewing last time, so here's a super special double awesome thanks to **Calm Envy, Minako, albino-yaoi, Teal Phoenix, BlueFox of the Moon, MyraHellsing, haku fan1, Margherita-Lily, Mittzy, RemainSilent1, Koi no Soshan, rohanfox, Astalavisbon, **and especially to** Angael, ** **Rahuratna, Ryou VeRua, Fiver, Tenshi no Toki, Dawn 3, mystralwind,** and** ltkk022 **for leaving such fantastic, encouraging, long reviews =)

I apologize if I thanked you and I haven't had a chance to read and review your stories yet – I try to do that for everyone who takes the trouble to review mine! I really mean it when I say thank you – your reviews keep me going, and knowing you guys appreciate this story and care enough to give feedback is really inspiring and makes me incredibly happy.

One more side note before the chapter starts: I know Akefia is a fan name, but I decided to use it – number one, I just like it a lot, and number two, it sounds more Egyptian than Bakura, Doroboo, or Touzokou. This is North Africa, people. Come on now. ^^ **Koi no Soshan** also brought to my attention that the Egyptian Arabic pronunciation of Malik is "meh-lick" with equal emphasis on both syllables. "Ma-_leek_" is the Saudi pronunciation that I learned. Oops.

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh or any of its characters. If I did, I would be sipping Dom Perignon in a diamond-studded hot tub instead of typing on a ratty old couch which doubles as my bed. Thank you, and enjoy!

ʘ

The gathering showed signs of dying down; many of the thieves were growing tired, and it was getting colder and colder, desert winds blowing in the entrance of the cave. All the men had had their fill of wine, the camel had been completely devoured, and the fire had burned down to the embers. The crescent moon was high in the sky.

Akefia rose to his feet, surprisingly steady considering he had been drinking steadily since sundown. "I think it's about time you all get some sleep," he announced. "Otherwise you lot will be useless tomorrow." There was a collective murmur of assent.

"Siamun, feed the horses," he ordered. "Zaza, make sure that fire's out. And Teti-En, don't forget to do whatever it is you do." He turned to go and then paused as he thought of something. "Oh, and Majesty," he continued, "get that camel out of here, would you? Otherwise this place will be full of jackals all night."

The Thief King must have seen Malik's horrified expression, for he laughed to himself as he walked away. "Don't worry, I'll think of plenty more for you to do tomorrow," he called out, and disappeared behind the curtain of the room where Malik had first woken up.

Malik wasn't sure which idea bothered him more – having to actually touch the remains of the camel, or sleeping in a place so readily accessible to jackals.

The noble bravely turned to face the carcass, which in truth was not much more than bones at that point. Trying not to think about it too much, he squeamishly lifted it off the spit and grasped it by a charred rib, dragging it across the rocky dirt floor to the mouth of the cave. _Thank Ra it's not the whole camel,_ he thought to himself, noticing it wasn't very heavy.

He dragged it outside, opting to leave it by a solitary rock a good distance from the cave entrance, the opposite direction from where the horses were tied up. Outside, the desert was almost pitch black, save for the feeble light of the moon and the warm glow emanating from the thieves' cave. It was impossible to see anything except the tops of the highest sand dunes, and in the distance, to the West, the silhouette of a dark mountain range against a lighter sky. The landscape around him was as staggeringly vast as the firmament above.

A story came to his mind, a legend Ishizu used to tell him all the time when he had been younger, his sister's favorite. It was the tale of how Isis had learned the secret name of Ra.

_I have made the heavens,_ Ra told Isis in the legend, recounting his mighty deeds as the King of Gods. _I have stretched out the two horizons like a curtain, and I have placed the soul of the Gods within them._

The night wind swept across the desert, whipping the sand into the air, swirling it into fantastical, ghostly forms that danced across the ground like restless spirits. A dark cloud covered the moon.

_I am He who, if He openeth His eyes, doth make the Light, and, if He closeth them, Darkness cometh into being._

If Ishizu were here, she would put her arms around him. He would hear her soothing voice telling him not to fear, that the Gods were watching over him. _Ra has His eye on you_, she was fond of telling him, for as long as he could remember. He'd never been quite sure what she meant by that.

Without her by his side, though, doubt came creeping into Malik's mind, cold fingers of logic wrapping around his thoughts. _What do you know, Ishizu? Isn't everything that's happened so far been proof that the Gods are looking away? Or perhaps they enjoy watching people suffer, like me. _Perhaps Ra did have His eye on Malik, but maybe His eye was the eye of a hawk, glassy-sharp and full of cold scrutiny, watching and waiting for him to fall… _What made you think I shouldn't be afraid, sister? _

The air was freezing cold; Malik's breath came out as mist, and he rubbed his arms to get the warmth back into them. He looked back at the carcass by the rock, eerily illuminated by the moonlight. If there were jackals around here, he knew the entire thing would probably be gone by morning. He realized the bodies of the Pharaoh's henchmen were probably out here somewhere too.

Something moved at the periphery of his vision, and suddenly, with a start, he noticed a multitude of shiny black things scuttling across the sand.

He ran the whole way back to the cave.

Siamun was just bringing out oats for the horses when he saw Malik, dashing madly for the entrance. Siamun looked around, and once he was reassured that there was nothing out of the ordinary nearby, wondered briefly if the high-strung noble was seeing things.

Malik came to a halt as soon as he was back inside and put a hand on the wall to steady himself, panting for breath. Nefermaat and Kawab looked up at him quizzically from the side of the fire pit. Zaza was just emerging from the back of the cave, holding a lamp and a bucket of water.

"Are you all right?" he asked, somewhat taken aback. Malik was pale, his eyes as wide as if he'd just been visited by an apparition.

"Scorpions," Malik gasped, waving a hand vaguely toward the mouth of the cave. "Lots of them. Everywhere."

Nefermaat snickered to himself nastily. Zazamoukh poured out the water onto the burning embers of the fire, which hissed and sputtered as they went out. "Well," he told Malik cheerfully, "now you know what we feel like when we get anywhere near the Palace."

Nefermaat clutched his heart dramatically and widened his eyes. "Guards," he mimicked, his voice a breathy falsetto. "Lots of them! Everywhere!"

"Oh come on," Zaza said, unable to keep from laughing. "That's not nice."

"That's not what I sound like," Malik muttered sulkily, not quite brave enough to start a real argument.

He noticed a rustling sound to his left and looked around. Teti-En was crouched by the side of the entryway, in deep concentration, tying elaborate knots in what looked like a thin silver string hanging from the top of the arc and muttering under his breath.

"What's he doing?" Malik asked Zaza in a whisper, not wanting to distract Teti-En from whatever he was doing.

"Just a spell," Zaza replied in a normal tone.

"What does it do?" Malik couldn't refrain from asking.

"It's an illusion," Zaza said, putting the bucket in a corner. "From the outside, it'll look like there's no opening in the rock. Keeps people away ninety-nine percent of the time. Unless they've got their own magicians, of course." Zaza lowered his voice, although it was clear Teti-En was paying them no mind. "Magicians always smell out an enchantment."

"The spell lifts at sunrise," Aminadav told him, emerging from behind a blue curtain that no doubt led to another room. "So you probably don't want to go outside until then. It's easy to get lost. Right, Kawab?"

The strapping thief grumbled. "I don't want to talk about it."

Malik's interest was piqued. Of course, there were magicians in the Pharaoh's city, and the priests – his sister included – performed magic on a regular basis. But for the most part, the important spells were all kept top-secret, performed in private, like the rituals. The magic, supposedly, wouldn't work if cast in the presence of the uninitiated – thus, Malik had never really seen it up close before. He was fascinated.

The words of the spell flowed into each other, rising and falling like a lullaby. Teti-En's deft fingers worked quickly. The instant a complex knot was completed, it seemed to melt, and the silver thread would become smooth and straight once more.

Just then, they heard a roar and a string of infuriated curses from the direction of Akefia's chamber, and an instant later, the curtain was flung to the side and the Thief King appeared at the entryway, eyes blazing molten silver. He raised a sheaf of papyri in one hand. The other was clenched into a fist. Malik felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.

"Who is responsible for this?" he thundered.

They had all become very still, not daring to move. Siamun had halted at the mouth of the cave. Kawab's eyes were widened in alarm. Teti-En was motionless, the words of the spell frozen on his tongue. The silver thread slipped from his fingers. Even Nefermaat looked scared stiff.

Akefia glared threateningly at each of the thieves in turn. "Well?" he snarled. "_Some_body is going to confess, or as Ra is my witness, every last one of you - "

"It was me." Malik's small, tremulous voice broke the quiet, and some of the thieves turned to stare at him, astounded.

With deadly purpose, Akefia advanced on Malik until he was backed into the side of the cave. He brought his fist hard against the wall above Malik, and he flinched, shrinking back.

"I trusted you alone in my chamber," Akefia said coldly, "and you went through my personal belongings?" He laughed quietly, without mirth. "You must really feel entitled, _Majesty_."

The last word felt like a knife, and Malik flinched. He hadn't realized it before, but it was true – the Thief King had taken him in with almost no questions asked. He had to have trusted Malik, at least a little, and he had managed to go and destroy that trust before he even knew it existed.

For the second time that night, the Thief King was inches away. Before, he had been Malik's protector, the Pharaoh's henchmen the enemy. But now he was angry, and Malik was no longer sure who the enemy was.

"I…I'm sorry," Malik stuttered. His heart was hammering against his chest. "I thought you might want them organized…" His voice wobbled. "I wasn't…I didn't know…" He tried to look away from the Thief King, but found he couldn't.

Akefia's glare softened almost imperceptibly as he looked down at Malik. The boy was staring up at him, violet eyes huge in terror. Not only terror, though, no – there was defiance in those eyes, hiding somewhere behind the fear, as if it were hesitant to let itself be shown. Malik took a shallow breath and his chest hitched. The thief noticed how the boy stiffened and held his breath then, as if he thought he could hide that he was afraid. Akefia let his gaze drop to his slightly parted lips. A long moment passed.

"Well," he muttered roughly, "don't let it happen again." He held Malik's gaze for another brief moment, but his expression was unreadable. Finally he sighed heavily, and shook his head briefly as if to clear it. "You're lucky everything's still there."

With that he turned from Malik abruptly and stalked back to his chamber, disappearing behind the curtain. Each of the thieves let out a deep sigh of relief.

"Wow," said Zaza shakily. "He must really like you."

Malik stared at him incredulously. He was in no mood for the man's jokes at the moment.

Zaza met his eyes. "Oh, I'm serious," he said. "If it had been one of us…" Zazamoukh trailed off and gave a nervous laugh. "Well, I don't think you really want to know what would have happened."

ʘ

It was midnight, and Atemu stood alone, leaning his arms on the edge of the palace balcony and looking out over his city. It was quiet at this hour, a few lights still on in the scattered windows of low-slung buildings. Most of the activity in the central marketplace had died down, and tired merchants were packing up their wares and heading home.

When the moon was directly overhead, a single trumpet blew. The wind carried the lonely sound high above the mud-brick rooftops. Soon it was joined by many others, rising from various locations on the city walls, the mournful noise resounding throughout the metropolis. This was the signal for curfew. After the trumpets had sounded, any citizens caught roaming the streets would be placed promptly under arrest.

The sound went through Atemu like a pang of grief. Sorrow was always curled up in some corner of his soul - like a sleeping animal, quiet and still. But late at night, when the wind blew cold and the trumpets echoed over the city with a forlorn harmony, sadness seemed to take on an unbidden weight, tangible and undeniable. Memories came softly like a thief in the night, fruitless regrets and whispered promises that had been broken echoing throughout the chambers of his lonely mind. Lately, the Pharaoh would lie awake most nights until Ra ascended, the rays of His morning sunlight breaking over the window sill.

Footsteps came up behind him and stopped softly a respectful distance away.

"The curfew is early, my Pharaoh." High Priest Seth's voice was quiet and solemn. He had become careful around Atemu in recent days.

"I saw fit," was all the Pharaoh said in reply.

Seth walked up beside him to the balcony and looked out. Lights were going off in the houses, and the streets were now completely dark. He studied the Pharaoh. He suspected Atemu was once again unable to sleep; the Pharaoh was not wearing any of his customary kohl or jewelry. Without it, he looked incredibly young and incredibly weary.

"It is probably a good idea," said Seth. "What with the recent attacks."

In truth, he was afraid Atemu was growing paranoid. The early curfew would hardly do anything to deter the notorious Thief King, who, Seth knew, was as good as invisible when he chose to be. And as for the brother of the priestess…well, he had avoided capture thus far. He had clearly found a good hiding place. They had been patrolling the city at night, and combing the streets during the daytime, but the fact of the matter remained that there were simply not enough guards they could spare to do an all-out search of the city. As such, they were simply playing a waiting game, until eventually Malik surfaced. Things were in a sad state.

For example, the recent incident with the priestess, Ishizu. The guards had just stood there and let the bandit make his escape, when what they should have done was attack him. Seth could only imagine the contempt the Thief King must now hold for their defense faction. Even though in all likelihood the guards would have met their demise, that was not the point. Throughout the history of the Kingdom of Egypt, soldiers had always had to go willingly to their deaths for the sake of their country. An empire demanded blood – a sacrifice that the citizens of Egypt, it seemed, no longer wanted to make.

Seth knew they needed numbers. Instead of earlier bedtimes, they should be drafting soldiers from all the villages they could find, enlisting aid from foreign powers if need be - but he refrained from voicing his opinions to Atemu. Talking to a statue would do more good. The Pharaoh was strange now, withdrawn to some point within himself where it was impossible for Seth to reach.

"Any news?" Atemu's voice was quiet in the stillness. Seth knew he was asking about Malik Ishtar, the murderer.

"Not since you last asked," he replied. "But rest assured we will find him."

"I hope so," Atemu told him pointedly. "The sooner the execution proceeds, the better."

Seth nodded to show he understood. "I worry for Ishizu's sake," he admitted, partially to himself. "Beheading is an ignoble death."

Atemu gave a short, humorless laugh. "Beheading would be too kind."

Seth was not sure what to make of this. "My Pharaoh," he reminded his cousin uneasily, "beheading is the customary punishment."

"And I have an uncustomary one in mind." Atemu turned to look at Seth for the first time. Despite his words, his voice was hollow. "Mahado was not only my priest, Seth. He was my friend. We were children together."

Atemu seemed like a stranger even as he spoke, his expression as blank as the mask of a sarcophagus. "He was a prince among men," he said, "and now he is gone, snuffed out like a candle. He has crossed to death's other kingdom before his time."

Seth took a moment to choose his words. "I realize that. It is a loss to all of us."

Atemu turned awat again.

"I trusted him, Seth," Atemu said, voice oddly flat. "More than I trust anyone. More than I trust you."

Seth didn't reply. Atemu's confession felt like a betrayal. Of course, Mahado had been a paragon of virtue. Yet Seth was family. Their fates were bound together, blood on blood, as the Gods had decreed. Did that mean nothing to the Pharaoh?

"More than that," Atemu went on, "the murderer has made profane what was sacred. He took Mahado's life in Aknamkanon's tomb itself. My father's immortal resting place has been defiled by death."

Seth made no response. He knew it was true.

"Executing him will not lift that stain," the Pharaoh said, "nor will it bring Mahado back. But, by Ra, I will make him know the meaning of pain before he dies."

Seth opened his mouth to say something, then realized there was nothing to be said. The Pharaoh's words hung in the air, heavy with invisible weight. Atemu turned his back on his cousin and walked away quietly, disappearing into the shadows of the inner chamber like a ghost.

Seth's soul was troubled, and he remained where he was for a long while, watching over the silent city from above. In Nut's half-light, it looked like a necropolis. He wondered if the sleeping citizens were plagued by uneasy dreams, as he was, or whether their rest was the untroubled sleep of the innocent.

The arid landscape of the desert stretched beyond the city walls in all directions, and the dark sand stirred with rolling dunes. It was like a dry ocean, infinite and restless, and in the middle of it all, Seth suddenly felt very small. He tried to form a prayer to whatever God was still awake. But his voice came out an uncertain whisper, and when he closed his eyes, the only images his mind could summon were faces with eyes that were hypnotized and lost - strange faces made of broken stone.

ʘ

On some profound level, Malik knew he must seem like a complete gutless coward. He certainly felt like one at any rate.

This did not prevent him from staying out by the fire pit until most of the thieves had gone to bed. It was now silent in the cave. The moon was directly overhead in the night sky outside. The horses slept where they stood. He had waited for someone to tell him what to do, and when it finally became clear that no-one would (unless the horses outside suddenly started giving orders) Malik decided that one of two options lay before him.

Either he could go into Akefia's chamber and make some sort of formal apology. Knowing him, he would get scared, go into a cold sweat, and start stuttering, sounding like a total fool and probably making no sense whatsoever. The Thief King would then either a) say something terrifying, b) make fun of him, c) kick him out or d) maim him. Or any combination thereof – none of which seemed too appealing. Malik suspected Akefia wouldn't kill him (since, after all, he _had_ had the chance) but nothing was certain.

His other option was to lay low until – Ra willing – the Thief King forgot about the whole thing. This, of course, would entail staying where he was all night. Malik had decided to refer to this location as "the main cave" for lack of any better name. The smaller caves Malik already thought of as "rooms" or "chambers" because frankly, it felt somewhat barbaric to say, "Oh, Nefermaat's gone off to his _cave _to sleep," or "Tell Siamun to come out of his _cave_."

_In any case_, Malik thought, his somewhat frazzled mind returning to the problem at hand, _it's a no-brainer_. He would stay put by the fire pit, and hopefully, when he woke up, the Thief King wouldn't be too mad and things would go back to the way they were. There was one lamp burning next to the wall a short distance off – it was possible to see the interior of the cave, but only dimly. With a sigh, Malik settled back against one of the benches, hoping he would be able to sleep. Sure, it was uncomfortable, he thought drily, but what was a sore back in the morning compared to the very real threat of severe bodily harm?

Hardly had he congratulated himself on having made the decision, however, when there was the rustle of a curtain being pulled aside, and soft footsteps stole up behind him. The footsteps paused for a moment, and then, of all things, whoever it was started to laugh.

All of the thieves, Malik had noticed, walked noiselessly (no matter how loud they were being in other respects) but only one of them had that distinctive laugh Malik heard right now. That laugh could be cold and sharp as a knife blade, dripping with disdain, yet it would also sometimes burst free, unrestrained and warm, full of mirth and a teasing hint of mischief. The Thief King's laugh changed like the faces of the moon.

"Am I interrupting a private moment?" Akefia asked. Malik could hear the smile in his voice.

"No," Malik replied, doing his best not to sound anxious. He was still staring ahead at the wet coals in the fire pit. "Not at all."

"In that case, I'm obliged to ask what it is you're doing out here all by yourself." Akefia crouched next to Malik, bringing their faces to the same level – the way you would crouch next to a small child when you want to seem like you're taking them seriously.

Malik chanced a look. In the dimness, Akefia's skin looked darker than it normally did, especially contrasted with his pale hair that looked almost luminous, and the white gleam of his smile. He didn't look angry anymore, Malik noticed with surprise. His grey eyes glimmered with amusement, and it was with frustration that Malik found himself wondering (not for the first time) what exactly it was that Akefia found so funny about him.

"Um," Malik replied. "Settling down for the night?"

"Might need a knife then," Akefia said thoughtfully. "Scorpions tend to like to settle in here too when the sun goes down."

Malik's eyes widened in horror. He hadn't considered the possibility that Teti-En's enchantment might not work on animals. He had a sudden, obscenely clear vision of a clean-picked skeleton in the fire pit the next morning…

"Of course, on the off chance you decide you want to live to see dawn," Akefia went on, smirking at the dismayed look on the noble's face, "you _are_ always welcome to stay with me."

Malik looked at him again, stunned. "Really?" he asked.

The thief raised an eyebrow. "Unless there's something else about you I need to be informed of…"

Malik couldn't deny he was a little thrown off. The last time he'd seen Akefia, the man had looked about ready to murder him, and now…he was actually inviting Malik to share his room? Did he remember the previous incident at all?

"It's just," Malik began, somewhat hesitantly, "I, uh." _See? I knew it. Stuttering again, you fool._

"Yes?" said Akefia patiently.

"I'm very sorry for rearranging your papyri and I wanted to apologize and it won't happen again and I realize that -"

"Stop," the Thief King interrupted. Malik stopped.

"Take a breath," the Thief King said. Malik took a breath.

"Forget about it," the Thief King told him levelly. "You didn't know any better. It wasn't your fault."

Malik let the breath out. He was surprised to find he suddenly had the urge to embrace Akefia. Needless to say, he didn't.

Akefia continued, his tone serious. "The important thing is, you didn't take anything. That's one of two rules around here – you can rob anyone else blind for all I care, but don't try stealing anything from me. Trying is as far as you'll get."

"Okay." That made Malik feel a little better. Stealing wasn't really in his nature, so as far as rules went, it was very easy to abide by. "What's the other rule?"

"Do whatever I tell you to do." Akefia grinned at him.

"Oh," said Malik, a little uneasy. "Well, that clears things up."

"Doesn't it, though? " Akefia rose to his feet.

"Wait," said Malik suddenly. He felt the urge to say something to the Thief King, something that had been weighing on his mind that entire evening. Now, he supposed, was as good a time as any to bring it up.

"Yes? What is it?"

Malik went on uncertainly. "I wanted to thank you for what you did earlier…"

Akefia turned to look at him with a frown. "You mean scaring the living daylights out of you?"

"No, not that…" He continued, sounding doubtful even to his own ears. "I meant, you know, saving me when the Pharaoh's men came. Thanks." He forced himself to look up and meet Akefia's eyes, lest the thief think he was insincere.

His words seemed to hang in the air. There was a moment's pause and then Akefia looked away.

"I vowed to your sister that I would let you come to no harm," he replied simply. "I swore it on Isis' name. It is not a promise I intend to take lightly."

"Oh."

Malik felt let down, disappointed for some reason. Why? What had he been hoping for exactly? Akefia was no Ishizu. Of course, Malik was a mere inconvenience to him, not even important enough to provoke any sincere annoyance. Of course, he was only honoring his oath. It would never to do to forget that without that promise, the thief would probably have slit Malik's throat by now. That, or left him to die in the desert.

For some twisted reason, Malik had to suppress a laugh. Everything he had ever known and loved was gone in a snatch, evaporating like the dew at sunrise. In all likelihood, he would never again see his sister, never again walk the streets he had known as a child. The self he had known was different too. He had become strange to himself, withdrawn and subdued, full of doubts and fears, and yet, somehow, it was all the same – he had just changed hands, being foisted off to the next person like so much useless contraband._ Just something else I'll have to acclimate to. Funny how hard it is to get used to something that doesn't change…_

"Get some sleep," said Akefia abruptly.

With that, he turned and walked away, soon fading into the dimness. For all the swagger in his step, he was almost silent on his feet. There was a rustle of a curtain, and the sound of two lowered voices in conversation a moment later. The other voice Malik recognized as belonging to Aminadav.

With a sigh, Malik rose to his feet as well, stifling a yawn, and made his way to the red curtain. What else could he do? He was at a standstill. He hadn't decided to come here, and to leave suddenly, to run away, would be nothing less than pure folly. He was stuck, for better or worse.

He pushed aside the red curtain, and the room was as he remembered it. There was the divan, the harp, the statue of Anubis; the papyri were messily stacked in a corner of the room, a few leafs scattered here and there - Akefia had apparently been reading. Malik suddenly felt guilty; the thief was clearly more learned than he'd given him credit for. Several oil lamps were lit, casting a warm glow on the rock walls. The air had a sense of apprehension, as if the room were waiting for its occupant to return.

After a moment of deliberation, Malik decided to take the floor instead of the divan. Although the night was cold, he chose not to hazard taking a blanket. The tunic he was wearing was practically a blanket anyway. He curled up by the wall, cushioned his head on his arm comfortably, and let his eyes fall closed.

The lamps were still aflame, and a warm golden light filled his vision behind his shuttered eyelids. It was soothing, though, and a delicious slumberous torpor filled his limbs. The worries of the day began to depart from his mind, leaving in their wake a calm as soft as a pillow filled with down.

Malik had almost fallen asleep when Akefia came back.

The room looked empty at first, but almost immediately the thief noticed Malik on the floor, curled up facing the wall with his eyes closed peacefully, covered by nothing save his tunic. He looked downright pitiful. Akefia heaved a sigh.

"You're not sleeping there, Majesty."

Malik kept his eyes closed, pretending he hadn't heard Akefia.

"Nice try, Majesty. I know you're awake."

With what felt like a gargantuan effort, Malik opened his eyes and looked up. Akefia was standing by the entrance, arms crossed, looking down at him impatiently. "Move," he said shortly.

"Thank you very much, but I'm quite comfortable here," Malik mumbled politely, stifling a yawn. His brain was moving rather slowly. He really didn't want to get up.

"Maybe I didn't make myself clear," Akefia said indulgently. He pointed to where Malik was. "That's where I sleep. And that is where you sleep." He pointed to the divan.

Malik remained where he was. Etiquette had always taught him to be an unassuming guest, so taking the floor felt automatic to him. It was simple courtesy, wasn't it? The divan was the only other place to sleep. Akefia had let him sleep there while he was away, but why would it be there at all if it wasn't where Akefia usually slept himself?

That, and he _really_ didn't want to move.

"I'm fine, really," he replied.

Akefia glared down at him, one eyebrow raised. "You're just as stubborn as your sister, aren't you?"

Malik tried to avoid the glare. He already felt guilty enough for imposing on Akefia's hospitality, and no matter what the thief said, he'd be damned if he'd take up the only comfortable spot in the room. He suspected it was a trap in any case – Akefia would trick him into sleeping on the damn thing, only to make some sardonic comment about privileged nobles, and then he'd feel even more guilty for the rest of the night and probably not be able to sleep. _No thanks. _

Akefia indicated the divan. Malik turned toward the wall again and closed his eyes, somehow hoping that maybe Akefia would just disappear and he would be left in peace…

Akefia growled with impatience and stalked across the room so he was by Malik's side, looming menacingly over the smaller noble. "You'd better get used to taking orders, Majesty. I don't take kindly to insolence."

"But you're just going to make fun of me again," Malik protested.

Akefia had to suppress a smile. "_That's _what this is all about?"

Malik was about to reply that it was a perfectly legitimate suspicion, given the events of the night thus far, when Akefia shrugged off his robe and tossed it to the back of the room, where it landed irreverently on the statue of Anubis.

Then, to Malik's total and utter shock, he felt the Thief King lie down beside him.  
Akefia pulled a blanket over the both of them and made himself comfortable as if nothing at all were amiss.

Malik twisted around blinked at him. "What on _earth_ are you doing?"

Akefia crossed his arms behind his head and glanced at Malik, an amused expression on his handsome features. "Well, Majesty, if you refuse to leave what amounts to _my bed_," he replied, "I can only assume it's because you _want _to be here." The Thief King chuckled. "I must say, I admire your directness…"

Malik sat bolt upright, indignant. "You know perfectly well I didn't mean it like that."

"So what did you mean? Enlighten me."

Malik found himself at a complete loss for words. For once, he yearned to respond with something witty and biting, yet due to the fact he was thoroughly thrown off balance, a reply eluded him. Usually it was the other way around…

"You know, you turn pink an awful lot," Akefia observed smoothly.

Malik realized with horror that he was indeed blushing. "Well, whose fault is that?" he demanded, flustered.

"No need to get defensive, Majesty," Akefia murmured, smirking and pulling him back down so they were facing each other. "_I_ don't mind if you stay."

Malik found that he didn't resist at all for some reason and inwardly cursed himself. But for a brief, confused moment in which he didn't feel entirely himself, he wondered if it would really be all that bad to just give up, to stay there…after all it was a cold night, and Akefia's body next to his was warm…

The Thief King had the aroma of something exotic, something dangerous. The heavy, perfumed scent of black opium surrounded him, wood smoke from the fire - and there was something else too, something that Malik knew, but couldn't quite place…

Malik looked up to find Akefia gazing at him, leaning on his elbow, a smile still gracing his lips. Hypnotized, like a cobra before the snake charmer, he found himself unable to look away. They were very close. Dimly, he realized that the Thief King's hand was resting on his side, heavy and strong. He could feel its heat through his tunic. The air seemed to have gotten thick.

"It's a little warm in here, isn't it?" Malik managed to say (rather unintelligently, he thought).

"On the contrary," replied the Thief King. "It's freezing." Was it just his imagination, or did Akefia pull him a little closer?

It was definitely not his imagination when Akefia's hand wandered further down. A teasing thumb began to trace slowly along the bone of his hip that always seemed to jut out at an odd angle, leaving a strange sensation in its wake - a warm tingle that ran along Malik's skin.

Although his touch was soft, Malik's breath stopped in his throat for a moment and a tremor of fear seemed to pass through him like a vapor.

It was only for a brief moment, a split second really – but Akefia saw how Malik's eyes suddenly grew distant before his expression returned, vague and troubled. He let his hand slip away as Malik hurriedly got to his feet and withdrew to the other side of the room.

The noble stood for an awkward moment in deliberation before sheepishly deciding to sit on the divan. The apprehension had passed as soon as it had come.

"You win," Malik muttered under his breath, not meeting Akefia's eyes.

Akefia grinned and threw a blanket at him. "Quite an ordeal getting you to leave, I have to say."

Malik's eyes widened. _He was just screwing with me the whole time…_

"Maybe," said Akefia, "you'll listen to me next time."

Malik lay down in a huff. He really didn't appreciate being manipulated…but he couldn't deny on some level he felt relief. Relief that Akefia hadn't been serious, relief that he might be able to put it out of his mind.

The shadows from the oil lamps flickered on the domed ceiling of the rock cave. Malik lay and watched the dancing light diminish as one by one, Akefia blew out the lamps. The darkness encroached as shadows grew from the corners of the room. There went a lamp, there went another, extinguished by a gust of air, plunged into darkness by something as insubstantial as a breath.

Akefia picked up the last lamp and was about to blow it out when Malik stopped him.

"Wait," he said, somewhat sharply. "Would you mind leaving it on?"

Akefia shrugged. "Not at all." He put the lamp on the floor in the middle of the room. "Afraid of the dark, Majesty?"

Malik didn't reply. The light was just strong enough to faintly illuminate most of the cave. He could make out the thief, a short distance away, the sheen of the curtain, the dull gleam of the treasure in the corner.

"I'm not afraid," he said finally.

"I'd recommend being truthful with me, Majesty," Akefia said. Malik was looking away, but he could see him out of the corner of his eye. "If not, we may run into difficulties up the road."

"You can trust me," Malik told him. And it was true – he wasn't afraid. Not really. He was watchful, that was all.

"Trust you?" Akefia chuckled. "I don't trust anyone. Why you think I should trust you?"

"I'm honest," Malik said. He shrugged. "I have no reasons to lie."

"And you can tell me anything you want," Akefia replied, "but it doesn't make it true. I could say I was honest too, but would you believe me?"

"Probably, at least until you proved me otherwise."

Malik became aware of Akefia studying him. "All that means," the Thief King said at length, "is that you're lucky you've got someone smart looking out for you."

"Couldn't it also mean that you can be honest if you want?"

"If I _want_?" Akefia raised an eyebrow. "But, Majesty, therein lies the quandary. If being honest is something you can _choose_, doesn't that make everyone who chooses to be honest necessarily duplicitous by nature?"

Malik paused. He had never really considered this before. He wasn't about to back down, though. It was a matter of principle.

"Depressing, isn't it?" said the Thief King.

"No, it's honest."

He met Akefia's eyes, and was quick enough to register a look of surprise. And then the Thief King smiled in that way he had, lazy like a cat in the sun.

"_That _depends on how you choose to define honesty," he said, "and if we start talking about that, I suspect we'll be up most of the night." He yawned. "I propose we forgo this discussion at least until tomorrow."

Malik could have gone on arguing about compromised choices, big truths and small truths and everything in between, but his eyelids were growing heavy and it was hard to keep up with the pace of Akefia's mind.

"Get some rest," he heard Akefia say. His voice was muffled, and Malik could tell he was already half-asleep.

Sleep came more slowly to Malik, this night like most nights. The glow of the lamp was reassuring, but as the light changed, flickered and burned, so did the shadows in the corners of the room. Of course he wasn't afraid, but it was still hard to keep his eyes away from the walls. Malik wrapped the blanket around himself more tightly – it was made of wool, rough but warm. If he kept looking at the walls, he knew, sleep would never come, so instead he watched the steady rise and fall of the Thief King's back. Under the quiet sound of Akefia's breathing, he could hear the sound of the wind rising outside. Time passed, and slowly, Malik drifted off into a troubled slumber of his own.

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Please review?


	5. V

Ugh. Most of you have probably forgotten about this story at this point…please accept my apologies, it's been _way _too long since I've updated. I've had all sorts of computer problems and school anxieties and personal complications…however, I'm done with the academic year, so the updates will be coming regularly after this. That's a promise. (If I don't keep it, please antagonize me about it…) In recompense, I think this is the longest chapter yet…

The story's kind of taken a darker turn in this chapter…I kept the rating the same, but if you think I should change it just send me a message or let me know in a review! Just a warning for the faint of heart, it's weird, and probably a little disturbing…the first part is a continuation of the first part of Chapter 2. That said, it'll probably still be a bit confusing. It will all be explained in time…

Thank you once more to all those who reviewed last time! I really take your thoughts to heart and your reviews help my writing so much…and they make me really happy too! =D My heartfelt gratitude to **ltkk022, Tenshi no Toki, TealPhoenix, Jaims17, haku fan1, Rahuratna, Chibi-Roy-Chan, Mittelan, Alug-Andaaz-Hai, BlackxCinderella, Goddess of the Black Moon, mystralwind, Salarah, Calm Envy, MokoBunChan, The Sin of Envy, AFC~, name_your_price, Slave To My Pen, ranchan-akari,** and one anonymous reviewer whose review had me laughing hysterically (thank you, and no you didn't ruin it don't worry). I follow a lot of your stories and am continually honored that such talented people like my writing.

Just a few extra things – sorry if it's a little slow, it'll pick up in the next chapter. Also, in response to some queries, Marik will not be making an appearance in this story. Just so you know. =)

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_Mahado didn't move. Malik began to carefully edge out sideways between him and the wall._

"_Not so fast." Mahado's hand was on the wall next to him, trapping him there. He gazed down at the younger man with an unpleasant gleam in his eyes. "What's your rush?" He was way too close now. _

"_It's late," Malik stammered, still looking at the ground. "And if there's nothing else you need me to do here…"_

"_On the contrary," returned Mahado. "There is." With a vague smile, he reached up and ran his fingers through Malik's light-colored hair. The younger man was stock still, barely daring to breathe. _

"_The night is almost spent," the older man murmured. "Why would I go back now?"_

Time stood still for a brief moment. Mahado watched Malik intently in the darkness, as if trying to memorize his face. One hand continued to play idly with Malik's hair. Malik was uneasy, desperately wishing to be anywhere else. He felt queasy. One part of him was screaming to cut and run, while the other urged him to stay still and not do anything that could potentially make things worse.

Mahado's expression was one Malik used to notice in the eyes of the palace cats. As a child, he used to watch them sometimes when he was taking a break from his books, studying them and trying to understand their ways. Of course, he never got too close, since they were revered as gods and could potentially get affronted by his proximity. Malik had his private doubts about whether the cats were really deities, but had always kept them to himself along with quite a few other questions.

Ishizu was sometimes mystified at her brother's fascination with the cats, but assumed it was a sign from Bastet, an omen that she was watching over Malik. What he didn't tell her was that he didn't like them at all. He was only trying to comprehend their motives. They were adored and well-fed, but nonetheless, would always prey on the first mouse they saw. They got their joy out of catching the mice, pretending to let them go, only to turn again at the last minute and crunch their heads between their teeth. It was a cruel game. As if it wasn't enough that the cats encouraged doomed hope of survival, but in the moment before their death, the folly of the mouse was revealed, its foolishness in believing it could have been saved. And after all, wasn't that the worst thing you could do to one who was dying – prove that their entire existence had been a joke?

And yet, when the occasional asp would slither across a cat's path, the cat attacked it with deadly purpose. It would never toy with a snake the way it did with a mouse, the way Mahado was doing right now. At first, Malik would be confused. Why did the cunning asp, with its slitted eyes and flat head, get more sympathy than the mouse? But one day, an asp lashed out with its fangs, the cat was dead a minute later, and it all suddenly became clear. It wasn't about kindness at all. The cat simply knew the asp would bite back.

Slowly, the hand that was entwined in Malik's hair tightened until it hurt. Mahado was still watching him with the careful, detached interest of a puppeteer, curious how long it would take for him to protest against the pain. Not wanting to give him any satisfaction, Malik shut his eyes, willing himself not to make a sound.

He heard Mahado chuckle to himself, and the next thing he knew, the priest's lips were suddenly on his, demanding and insistent, kissing him hard enough to bruise. Malik's eyes snapped open, and he made a noise of protest that was muffled against the other man's mouth.

Mahado bit down on his lower lip – not a romantic lover's nip, but a bite hard enough to draw blood. Malik gasped in spite of himself, and Mahado seized upon the opportunity to thrust his tongue between Malik's lips before he knew what was happening.

_Unlike some, Malik had never dreamed of his first kiss being with anyone in particular. Despite the meaningless caresses he saw in the palace and the city, from the Pharaoh with his concubines to the prostitutes on the street, Malik had always defiantly held onto the belief that his first kiss would prove to be nothing less than a herald of true love. Perhaps others would dismiss a kiss as a mere trifle, something lovely and fleeting and as insignificant as moonlight on the water. But for him it would be different. _

_It would be something special, something completely separate from the usual dullness of the day-to-day – something beautiful and filled with light and endowed with meaning. He knew somehow that love wasn't simply lust, or the fondness one would feel for a friend. Nor was it the flame of infatuation – because infatuation burned away eventually, didn't it? _

_Was true love the transcendent union of Nun and Naunet – chaos met with the abyss, form born of formlessness, bringing forth the light of being? Was it, like the love of Tefnut and Shu, as changing and as stormy as water and air? Maybe, like the passion of Nut and Geb, it was as inexplicable as the mysteries of earth and sky. Or perhaps it was the patient, kind love of Isis and Osiris, strengthened by adversity and lasting until the end of time._

_In Malik's mind, falling in love was a little like dying. He couldn't know what it was like until it happened, but still he wondered. And sometimes he wondered too about the unknown beloved with whom he would share his first kiss. He wondered what this person would look like, if he would fall in love right away or slowly, if they would meet tomorrow or at some distant point in the future. And he dreamed of that someone finding him worthwhile, maybe even precious. He dreamed of having someone to cherish himself. And he dreamed of this person, whoever they might be, who would be an oasis in the desert of his soul - a shelter from the storm that raged within him._

The first emotion that surfaced was not anger, or fear, but disbelief. _This can't be what a kiss is. It can't be. _Malikcould feel the priest's loathsome tongue sliding against his own, wet and forceful, pushing deeper into his mouth. There was the metallic taste of blood on his lips.

With a shudder of revulsion, Malik summoned all the strength he could find and violently wrenched himself away from the priest. He stumbled away, impotent fury rising in his chest, feeling as if he had been robbed. He spat vehemently, his only thought that he needed the taste of Mahado out of his mouth.

A moment passed, and he straightened up slowly. He could sense the priest's eyes on him from behind.

"Isn't that sweet." Mahado's voice was cold and hard. "So now I know what you really think of me."

Carefully Malik wiped his mouth, and a creeping horror dawned on him as he realized what he had just done. Useless tears of outrage still stood in his eyes, but although he hated himself for doing it, he forced himself to mutter an apology.

"Don't lie. You're not sorry." Malik heard Mahado walk closer to him and forced himself to stay where he was. "Are you aware of the penalty for such disrespect?" _Do not run. It will go worse for you if he sees how scared you are._

"I apologize if I offended you." Malik tried to keep the hatred out of his voice.

"Offend me?" Mahado sounded intrigued now. "Someone like you could never offend me. A priest is not insulted by the comments of a slave."

The words stung, despite how often their like had been heard before. "I'm not a slave," Malik said quietly.

"Is that what you think?" said Mahado, and Malik tensed as he felt the priest's hand on his shoulder. It was a weirdly inappropriate gesture of amity, and Malik suddenly wondered if the priest had been drinking.

"Let me tell you something, then." He gave a mocking chuckle as his fingers began to trace slowly along Malik's neck, deliberate and proprietary. Malik shuddered.

"Despite what you may think," Mahado continued, "being a slave is not about what family you were born into. It's about whether you were made to control others, wield power and command respect – or whether you were born to follow orders, serve your betters and hold your tongue. Do you really need me to tell you which you are?"

Mahado laughed then, a hateful sound to Malik's ears. _You_ _have no idea, do you? Ishizu, Atemu, Seth? That the man you hold up as so noble, so good and so just – that he could laugh like that? _

And finally, at that moment, it became too much. Malik whirled around to face Mahado, shoving his hand away. "I'm no slave," he told the priest from between gritted teeth. "You have no idea what I am. You have no right to tell me what I am and am not, and you have even less right to touch me."

The catlike look was back in Mahado's eyes again, as if the game had become more fun the instant Malik decided to fight back.

"You think I don't know you?" Mahado stepped closer to Malik. The younger man retreated to maintain his distance; dimly he was aware they were approaching the far end of the hallway. _One step backward, one step closer to the outside…_

"You'll find, as you go through life," Mahado told him, advancing steadily, "that those who talk the most are the hardest to get to know. And those who don't talk…well, they're a little on the obvious side, if you know what I mean. You think just because you don't talk, I can't tell what you're thinking. But I regret to inform you it's exactly the opposite." For all his philosophy, Mahado sounded no less menacing.

Malik stepped backwards into the empty space beyond the end of the hallway, on the opposite end from the sealed chamber where Aknamkanon lay. Here, the hallway widened into a circular junction where myriad tunnels and hallways met and diverged. One of the paths eventually led back to the outside of the tomb, but there were many different ones to choose from, and Malik couldn't tell in the dimness which he had come by. He might not have remembered, even if he had been able to see. The only light there was emanated from the oil lamps in the hallway. The rest was unreadable darkness.

"The opposite?" Malik didn't really want to hear Mahado's answer, but he hoped to distract the priest enough so that he would be able to attempt some kind of escape. They were getting farther and farther away from the last traces of lamplight in the hallway now, and the shadows grew around Mahado's face until his features were almost consumed by the darkness.

"You think you're special," Mahado continued, voice cold with disdain. The light lingered in his eyes and then vanished as the last glow of candle light left them. "You think you're different. You think you're going to see the world – I've seen you with those books of yours. You manage to fool people into thinking you're some sweet, passive, humble little nobody – but the truth is, you think you're so much _better _than the rest of us…"

"Well, guess what, Malik? The truth is, you're not special. You're no different from any other _slave_." He scoffed. "And what ever made you think you were going to travel and see the world? You wouldn't know what to do outside the city limits, never mind outside the Kingdom of Egypt. And you think you're so superior, aloof, _untouchable_…" Mahado laughed, that horrible slow laugh again. "Well, I guess I'll be the one to show you how wrong you are."

He would think back on it later, and wonder if perhaps his fear had made him irrational. It might have been a trick of the light, or the look in Mahado's eyes, or the way it seemed his hand was moving toward the ceremonial knife at his side - but at that moment Malik felt suddenly sure that Mahado didn't intend for him to leave the tomb alive.

He feinted right abruptly, as if he was going to dash for the tunnel nearest him, but quickly turned and ran towards another that was to his left. He darted through the darkness blindly, praying his foot wouldn't catch on something and fall, not caring anymore that he couldn't see where he was going or that he might be running into a trap or worse. Behind him he could hear the priest's angry shouts, a reassuring distance away, as he tried to figure out where exactly Malik had gone. Malik hoped Mahado couldn't see in the dark too well. His own eyes were wide open, in protest of the blackness all around.

_Nothing is what you are, and nothing is what you'll be._

He stumbled and almost fell, but picked himself up and kept running. The empty air whistled by. The blackness was abysmal, neverending. He put his arms out on either side and discovered he could feel the walls on both sides of a narrow hallway. He let his fingers trace along the stone as he ran. At least he knew the space he was in, and at least he wouldn't run into a wall…unless this was a dead end. But he didn't allow himself to acknowledge this possibility. He could hear Mahado behind him, and although he was still a good distance away, he knew the priest had discovered the right path and was following him.

Malik's fingertips ran along small ridges and notches in the cool limestone – hieroglyphics, but that didn't tell him where he was. There was writing on almost every wall in the underground tomb, but in the dark, the engravings were meaningless. _This must be what it's like to be blind, _he thought, cursing his luck. If he'd had more time maybe he would have paused to try and decipher some of the carvings, which might have given him some clue about where he was in the tomb, depending on the story they described. But Mahado was after him, getting closer by the second – he could hear the man's voice behind him, calling out his name, but the syllables of the word were suddenly alien, unfamiliar. The sounds echoed hollowly off the walls of rock, repeating and bouncing off each other, until the reverberations combined to reach his ears: _Malik._

_Come back, Malik._

_Is that really my name?_ It sounded like a plea in a foreign tongue, urgent and meaningless.

The passageway took a sharp turn to the right and narrowed. The words beneath his hands changed to carved faces, and as his legs carried him farther and farther down the passageway, his fingers went skimming over sealed lips, hands frozen in motion, and countless eyes carved of stone, wide-lidded and unseeing. The walls seemed to be filled with eyes in the dark, watching blindly as he tore down the tunnel. His heart was pounding so hard it should have torn free of his rib cage. The back of his throat tasted like blood.

_Malik, stop. Come back._

_Malik._

The priest was still behind him, somewhere. The echoes multiplied in the confined space until it seemed to Malik's terror-warped mind that not one but many voices were calling him. Different voices, some no louder than a whisper – some lost, some angry or sorrowful. _Oh,_ _Malik,_ they mourned. _Come back,_ _Malik!_ they screamed.

Suddenly and without warning, the passageway came to an end. The walls beneath his fingertips gave way to empty space and for one terrifying instant Malik thought he was going to plummet off the edge of some underground precipice. He came to halt and realized, with a sense of acute relief, that the floor had not given way, just the walls; it was not a trap. Trying to catch what was left of his breath, he noticed that while the floors of the underground hallways in the tomb were level and smooth, the ground beneath his feet now had become rough and unfinished, as if the workers had stopped mid job.

It dawned on Malik that he must be at the edge of the tomb. Perhaps it was a dead end, perhaps it wasn't. He didn't know what to expect. The danger of running into a trap, however, was probably past.

He needed to find a hiding place; Mahado was advancing, fast. He could hear the thud of his running feet coming closer, carrying down the tunnel. Malik walked out further into the empty air, and after a moment his hands found contact with another rock wall – this one uncarved, as blank as the floor. He ran his hands further down along the wall, and found a round opening and beyond, a sort of hollowing out of the rock. A niche or a hole of some kind? He had no idea what it was, but his options were limited; Mahado was getting closer and time was running out. He lowered his head and climbed inside the cavity.

It was low ceilinged, less than his standing height, and he had to bend in order to fit. The first thing he noticed was a putrid stench that filled the hollow space. It was the scent of rot, something ripe to the point of decay. The only thing that kept him from retching was the fear that Mahado would hear and find him. If he managed to be quiet, there was still a chance the priest might not notice the hole. There might be another passageway nearby to lead him astray; if Malik could wait here until he had passed on or given up, he had a hope of escaping – however distant that hope might be.

Gingerly, he stepped a little farther into the cavity, trying to find its dimensions so he had some idea of the space he was confined to. It was a small catacomb, probably improvised by the workers to store equipment and tools while they were building the tomb. Impossibly, the darkness seemed to be even thicker here – the pressure of the blackness around him was almost like being underwater.

He stepped on something soft, and as his foot landed on it it gave way easily with a wet sound. The stench suddenly got much worse. At the center of the soft substance was something long and slippery and hard, almost like a bone, and then he realized what it was.

_Do not scream, Malik. That would be bad for you, would it not? He will find you if you make a sound. What is there to be afraid of anyway? What is dead cannot hurt you._

That was a different voice, a quiet one. But Malik's mind refused to think about this. If he thought about what was in the catacomb with him, he might go insane.

Mahado's footsteps came to the end of the hallway. Malik could tell he was now walking into the strange space at the edge of the tomb. He half-expected the priest to call him again, make some accusation, curse him, perhaps – but he said nothing. Outside the catacomb, he could hear Mahado pacing back and forth on quiet feet, listening.

Malik held his breath. Mahado stopped pacing. Now everything was quiet and still in the grave. He heard something he thought was the sound of insects crawling.

Malik didn't breathe, and the silence dragged on. He strained to hear, hoping against hope that Mahado would start walking away, but by then the blood was rushing in his ears. His head felt light. He realized, with a strange clarity, that he was going to lose consciousness. Wasn't it strange that he'd been able to go without breathing for this long? He wouldn't have thought it was possible, but apparently it was.

Later, he remembered thinking, just before he passed out, that it was sadly pointless to have held his breath. Mahado would just hear him collapse, anyway.

ʘ

At first, in the blackness, Malik thought that he had died.

After a while, though, he realized that he was breathing, and alive. _Perhaps I'm in a dream,_ he thought. _Caught in the web between worlds._ He wondered if he would be stuck here forever, and hoped not, because his back was sore, and his shoulders were twisted behind him.

As the pain came back, Malik became aware that his head was throbbing too. And then the memory of everything returned. Oddly enough, he remained calm at first.

He was sure Mahado would be gone. But he remembered more or less how to get back. If he kept his hands on the walls the whole way, he would be able to find his way back to the hallway he'd been in before, the one that led to the Pharaoh's chamber. After that, he didn't know what he'd do, but he doubted he would care, because at least he would be in the light of the oil lamps. Beyond food or water, he wanted light. The darkness felt like it was seeping beneath his eyelids.

When he tried to move, though, pain shot up his arms. Mahado had bound his hands together at the wrist behind his back with what were, Malik realized, the leather straps from his sandals. They were tied loosely enough so they wouldn't cut off the blood, but tightly enough so Malik knew he had little hope of getting free.

At first he tried talking to the darkness, to see if Mahado was still there. His legs were numb and his arms were useless. Part of him didn't believe that Mahado would leave him here to die. He wouldn't have disappeared without doing him the common courtesy of slitting his throat. But the silence stretched on unbroken and Malik's pleas grew more and more hysterical until he was cursing Mahado at the top of his lungs, shouting every insult he could think of into the blackness, where it bounced and echoed down the labyrinth of empty hallways within the web of the underground tomb.

He screamed until he ran out of things to say. And then silence; pervasive and thick, like a fog. It dragged on and on until his fingers, fidgeting nervously, found themselves trying to twist back at the knots of the leather straps to get them free – but after a few moments of fumbling, he realized they were of the kind of secret ritual knot known only to the priests. He would never be able to untie them. This realization awoke sorrow in him, as if mourning himself already dead, and it spilled out of his eyes down his face, hot and fierce.

Malik wept for a long time, but after a while his tears dried up, as tears will. He was simply too exhausted to go on. And besides, his sorrow was useless. Why did the impulse to cry survive even when there was nobody around to hear? It didn't make sense. Why tell his troubles to an empty tomb?

For it was an empty tomb indeed. All the sounds Malik had imagined, all the voices and echoes throughout the tunnels, they had all died down. Nothing but dead silence for immeasurable distance, so profound that his ears buzzed in protest. It was something like what having your head full of natron must be like, Malik thought. But he was going to die and for this reason, his thought had no consequence, and might as well have not existed. After all, there would be no-one else to give his thoughts to from now on, no-one to listen or remember. Aside from the soft, dead thing in the dark somewhere next to him, he was alone.

He had now done everything he would ever do. He had said everything he would ever say. He had had his chance to make his mark in the world, and now it was over. Now that he had talked and screamed and wept himself hoarse, the fact of his impending death loomed over him in the quiet. His time on earth was done, and Malik was no longer sure any of it had meant anything. Ishizu, no doubt, would tell him that this was only the last stage of his journey before he joined the eternal world of the spirits, before he went to see the Gods face to face. This was a joyful time, according to her. But suddenly, everything she had ever told him seemed to be complete nonsense, myths and fairy tales for children. He felt as if a veil had been lifted from his eyes and for the first time, he saw things as they really were. Was there any reason to think he wouldn't just descend into oblivion? What if all the kings in their pyramids – Khufu and Thutmose and Khafra – were dead,really dead, and were now nothing more than mouldering bodies?

Even if there was a point to all those rituals, he knew there would be nobody to prepare his own body for burial, nobody to read the right spells over him to ensure his spirit's survival. Even if he had been embalmed, he would probably just rejoin the Pharaoh's court to be a servant in the afterlife as well, or become a wandering ghost. But as it was, he would just remain here, underground, unburied, decaying – his heart would crumble, along with everything he had ever thought or known. His name would be forgotten, and his soul would be lost, like a grain of sand in the storm. He would die and vanish into anonymity – for who would remember him, after all? There was a wisp of life in him, like a candle flame – but it could be extinguished so suddenly, and what would be left of him afterwards? Nothing more than the remnants of the flesh he had once inhabited…

Malik didn't want to think about this, but as soon as he tried to think of something else, his mind would return to the thought he had been trying to escape – gnawing at it gleefully as a hungry rat, eviscerating it, turning it inside out, refusing to be satisfied until it had gotten to the heart of the matter. What else was there to think about? His five senses yielded nothing; it was dark and silent and numb, and even the smell of the rotting thing had become less noticeable after time. Everything he had ever learned or heard or known seemed suddenly useless, as inconsequential to him now as what they would be serving for breakfast in the palace. There was an empty place in his heart that he had never noticed before, and that was where fear now made its home, curling up comfortably as a waiting snake in its hole.

And so it was, perhaps out of desperation, that Malik began to tell himself stories.

He told himself all the legends Ishizu had told him as a child, all the myths he had read, all the yarns spun on summer evenings in the Pharaoh's city. He had always had a good memory, and his voice filled the silence for hours, recounting fables and fantasies to the listening darkness. When he ran out of tales he knew, he began to make them up – wild dramas populated with crocodiles and kings and Phoenician sailors. But after a while these stories too descended into chaos, running amok and losing coherency. And finally, when he had run out of things to say, Malik fell silent once more.

It was then that the voice came, quietly, as if it had been there all along.

_Why don't you tell another story?_ it asked.

It startled him so badly at first that he was unable to say anything. It was the same voice that had spoken to him before, that had told him not to be afraid – but he'd been sure he'd imagined it. The voice said nothing else for a while, waiting, and finally Malik replied.

"What?" he said. But the voice said nothing. "Is anyone there?" he asked again at length. He could have sworn he'd been alone.

_Nobody's here,_ said the voice. It was close, very close, and somehow far away. It sent apprehensive goosebumps up Malik's spine, but the voice itself wasn't frightening.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

The voice laughed, as if at a private joke. Malik realized the laugh was not coming from outside, but he heard it as if it was originating from somewhere within – like the droning of a fly that had crawled into his ear and was flitting about inside his head.

"You're not me," Malik said. It was a fact. The voice said nothing. "Are you a ghost?" Again, only silence was his reply.

Malik considered the idea that he might have already gone crazy. But as soon as the thought emerged, the voice came again.

_You're not insane_, it said. _You're as sane as you'll ever be._

"You can hear me thinking," Malik said. The voice assented.

"Why are you here?" he asked.

_Why are you here?_ the voice echoed.

The voice was one he would never forget, he was sure of that. But as soon as he tried to pin down what was so strange about it, it degenerated into vagueness, impossible to define. It was like the whisper of a feeble wind in dry grass, and it was like the buzzing howl in the center of a sandstorm, and it was like the last drop of water evaporating from a riverbed – and it was like none of these things at the same time.

"What do you want from me?" he asked finally.

_I want you to tell a story,_ it said. It sounded calm, and a little sad, and so alien and so familiar it broke his heart. It awoke a strange frenzy in Malik's soul, like a cornered animal, as if mania lay just beneath its placid surface. Or maybe it was just him. It was impossible to tell, just like it was impossible to tell if the voice was toying with him or not.

"I don't know any more stories," Malik said, and it was the truth.

_Make one up,_ said the voice.

"About what?"

_Tell a story about a little boy,_ said the voice.

Just as he was about to protest that he couldn't, Malik felt the words come loose on his tongue, unbidden, and he began to tell a story. The story was not his own, and the words came from a place that was strange and far away.

_Once, not so long ago, there lived a little boy. He walked the pathways of love, but still, he was often lonely._

Malik went on talking, unable to stop, and he would have sunk into the grip of terror had not a presence settled itself over his brain, like a warm wool blanket. He didn't worry after that. Thoughts and words came and glimmered briefly before disappearing, like stones sinking beneath the surface of a black pool.

_This was a little boy who knew of the heat waves before they arrived, who dreamed of the rains before they descended, who could tell when the storms were about to come. And one day a storm came the likes of which he had never seen before…_

Later, when Malik tried to think back on it, it was more like a blurry memory from early childhood, or a half-remembered dream. Details of what had been said seemed to shimmer and glow with a bare light, changing constantly, and looking back, Malik realized that he hadn't been feeling entirely himself. All he remembered was the sensation of having been asleep for a long time and finally awakening. He was aware of secret knowledge opening to him, hidden structures of the universe becoming apparent. There was the sense of a high wind in his heart, that blew through the core of his being – cold and exhilarating. There was a crack in the vision of his mind, like the door of the sun, through which shone a light that glared a thousand times brighter than the noonday Sahara, brighter than the eye of one who is dying. He knew what the light meant, and somehow he knew he couldn't look at it just yet, so the door of the sun closed, and the darkness descended over his mind once more. Later Malik would think back and regret that he couldn't remember anything definite, except that thoughts and memories and opinions, which he had once held so important, had seemed to vanish, to melt away like panthers in the mist.

ʘ

Mahado returned three days later, and Malik killed him. That much he knew.

There had been tentative steps in the darkness, loud in the silence, and Malik had waited for him to draw nearer. A golden light appeared on the walls, softly at first and then brighter, until Malik had to close his eyes against the pain. When he finally opened them, it might have been a minute or an hour later, and the priest was kneeling before him. His face was pale, etched with fear and something like remorse. He was looking into Malik's face, and when he saw that Malik was looking back, seemed to relax slightly.

"I thought you would have already died," he said. This struck Malik as an unusual thing to say.

Mahado went on talking, urgently and plaintively, as if he was trying to redeem himself. He talked about a purification ceremony, something evil, a ritual that must be performed. None of it made any impression on Malik. He was beyond caring what the priest had to say, and the incredible fact of his return only registered with Malik much later.

Eventually, Mahado must have realized this, for he broke off abruptly with an apprehensive look on his face. Malik watched Mahado watching him, and it seemed to him that the priest looked even a little afraid.

_Where has the cat gone to, Mahado?_ he thought mockingly.

Mahado took a knife from his robes and deftly cut through the leather straps that bound Malik's wrists. With unprecedented gentleness, he helped Malik climb out of the niche and pulled him to his feet.

Malik was able to move his arms for the first time in three days, and the blood shot through his veins, hot as liquid fire. He flexed his fingers and was delighted to feel the life spring back into them. Mahado had brought an oil lamp with him to light the way; it had been placed on the floor by the wall. Malik picked it up.

"Good idea to bring this," he told Mahado.

Mahado assented quietly. His face looked drawn, and there were bruise-colored shadows under his eyes, as if he hadn't been able to sleep.

"I don't need it anymore, you know," Malik said.

"What?" said Mahado. But Malik had already thrown the oil lamp against the wall.

The light sputtered as it went out. The darkness descended again. There was a scuffle, but even though Mahado was both taller and stronger, Malik managed to wrench the knife from his grip. Later, it would seem to Malik that Mahado hadn't been fighting as hard as he should have.

Now he had a rock pressed against Mahado's windpipe, and the priest's ragged breaths were quickly diminishing. Malik grasped the knife in his other hand; its edge was smooth as a song and sharp as betrayal.

_So what will you be, Malik? Will you be a mouse or an asp? Will you run the minute you can, or will you return what has been visited upon you? Will you take what is yours by right? _

But by that point, it wasn't even a question anymore. There was no choice now, if there ever had been. At twilight, the sun sinks towards the horizon, and no power on earth can make it stay its course. Malik raised the knife in one hand, and no power in heaven could have made him lower it. And the knife flashed in the darkness; the asp reared its head.

ʘ

There was a sound, like many voices all talking at once, an unintelligible cacophony of gibberish. Some spoke unfamiliar words while others growled or laughed or screamed. The voices echoed, repeating and multiplying before fading into quiet. And images began to race through Malik's head, quick flashes, unfamiliar visions, one after the other, passing by too rapidly to take any of them in. There were alien landscapes, strange monuments, unknown faces, isolated movements that made no sense. There were many images at once, frenetic and bizarre, accelerating until they all seemed to blend together in a sea of color without shade and motion without form, utterly divorced from meaning. Later, Malik would not remember any of them. He would only remember that there had been a voice whispering urgently above the confusion. He'd thought at the time it was his own.

ʘ

Akefia woke up. This immediately put him on guard. He never woke up in the middle of the night unless something was wrong. At the moment, however, nothing seemed extraordinarily out of place. Nobody was yelling, the horses were quiet – everyone was fast asleep, and there was a peaceful lull over the cave. Normally, Akefia would have been temporarily annoyed that this was the case, since if the universe had conspired to wake him in up in the middle of the night, there should at least be some excitement to show for it. But despite appearances, the Thief King was sure something was not as it should be. The feeling was like an uneasy snake in his gut, coiling and uncoiling. Nearby, the oil lamp still flickered. Judging by the wick, it was around three in the morning.

And then he remembered that the young noble was supposed to be here too, but there was no sign of him. Cursing under his breath, Akefia ran a hand through his hair and got to his feet. He knew Malik wasn't exactly happy about the new direction his life had taken. He hoped the boy hadn't gotten some kind of bright idea about trying to find his way back to the city, or even worse, striking it out on his own, because if that was the case Akefia was in for a lot more trouble than he had originally bargained for. Malik had seemed obedient and compliant enough at first, but it was possible he'd read the noble wrong. After all, it wasn't like he said much. And then, of course, there was the possibility that he wouldn't have anything to worry about after all, because there were plenty of opportunities for a quick death in the Sahara at this hour of the night, any number of which Malik might have already met with. This was a very unwelcome possibility, since it would mean that the Thief King had failed at keeping his promise. Akefia couldn't remember the last time he had taken such direct responsibility for someone. If Malik was going to make it more difficult than it needed to be, then by Ra, there would be hell to pay – unless, of course, he wasn't alive anymore.

Malik wasn't by the fire pit, as Akefia had hoped, which left only one possibility as to where he had gone. It was a windy night, which meant sand, but the Thief King didn't bother to cover his face before he ran out into the desert.

As it turned out, he didn't have to look far before he found Malik. He was standing a good distance off, facing away from the cave entrance, which was concealed in the foothills of a low mountain range. There was a clear line where the shadow of the rock gave way to moonlit sand, and this was where Malik was standing now – caught halfway between the shade and the radiance of the moon, which seemed to know the night was already half spent and was shining all the more brightly as if in desperation.

Akefia was silent. He didn't like getting worried, and because of this he didn't worry very often. He had been fully ready to tell the boy what the consequences would be if he ever pulled a stunt like this again – but something about the way Malik was standing had made the thief stop.

At first, Malik appeared to be standing perfectly still – rigid, almost – but then it became apparent that he was actually swaying slightly back and forth, steadily, like a cobra bewitched by the flute. It wasn't noticeable unless one watched him carefully. He rocked on his heels gently, the way one would rock a baby to sleep – and the sand beneath his bare feet made a soft, repetitive sound as it shifted. There was something at the noble's feet, which, the Thief King realized as he drew closer, was the decimated carcass of the camel from that evening.

At some point in the last few minutes, the wind had died down to a plaintive murmur. Akefia approached Malik quietly from behind. He appeared to be sleepwalking, and if he was, Akefia didn't want to wake him up. As he wondered why Malik would have come out here, it occurred to him how strange it was that he'd been able to navigate his way out of the cave asleep. In his experience, people tended to sleepwalk in places they knew well – if Malik had been living with him for years, perhaps it wouldn't have been so odd, but the boy had only arrived a few nights ago.

A few shreds of flesh still clung to the camel's bones, and flies were already buzzing around it lazily, alighting on the corpse only to fly off again half-heartedly and then land once more on an exposed vertebra, or in an empty eye socket. Without the covering of skin, the head looked raw and naked, a lipless mouth exposing oddly sharp teeth. The camel's ribcage lay open to the moonlight, like a treasure chest that had been emptied out.

The wind sighed, and the sands shifted, and the flies buzzed, but still, it was too quiet. Warily, Akefia realized that the only breaths he could hear were his own. This seemed to be impossible – after all, your respiration slowed down when you were asleep, but it didn't _stop_ – but thirty seconds passed and then a full minute, and there was not even the slightest ghost of a breath from Malik. His arms hung by his sides stiffly, but oddly enough his fingers were in motion, describing useless patterns in the air, curling and uncurling restlessly as if playing an invisible harp.

Akefia approached his side, studying Malik's face. Although his eyes were open, he certainly didn't appear to be awake, and he made no sign of having noticed the Thief King's presence. He was gazing down at the corpse by his feet, face devoid of expression, eyes half-lidded and vacant.

What had drawn him out here? The Thief King was certain this wasn't normal behavior, even if he was sleepwalking. He could be hallucinating, perhaps, as a result of stress, or dreaming. That didn't explain the fact that he wasn't breathing, though. Or his hands. They seemed to be moving with a mind of their own, reminding Akefia of the small crabs that one saw sometimes on the banks of the Nile.

The moonlight reflected from the sand back onto Malik's face, making it look pale and washed out. After a moment Akefia realized that in the whole time he'd been watching him, the boy hadn't blinked once. He didn't even seem to be looking at anything in particular – those dull eyes were just _open_, somehow, unseeing, as if he were listening carefully to some secret internal music.

The Thief King decided the strangeness had gone on long enough.

"Majesty?" he said softly, not wanting to wake him too suddenly. But Malik made no sign that he'd heard.

The Thief King reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. Judging by how cold his skin was, the noble had to have been out here for over an hour, he realized. Akefia touched him, and just like that, the spell was broken: Malik shuddered violently and his eyes snapped open, uncomprehending, before he doubled over and sank to his knees, gasping for breath. His lungs felt like they were on fire; he gulped down the cool desert air as desperately as if he had been drowning.

His vision was dark. Dimly, he became aware of a warm hand on his back, and then he realized that the Thief King was kneeling beside him. He took a few more breaths, and the shudders subsided into shivering. His eyes stung horribly, but his sight was returning already.

The Thief King was asking him if he was all right. He rubbed his eyes hard before opening them again, blinking at the man by his side. His eyes were unfocused, and he looked utterly confused, Akefia thought, but at least he looked like himself again.

Now the Thief King was asking what his name was.

"What?" Malik whispered. He felt lost.

"Do you remember your name?" the Thief King repeated. His voice was calm and steady.

"Malik," he said. His voice came out uncertain and hoarse. "Where am I?"

"The desert," said the Thief King. He rose to his feet and held a hand out to Malik. He looked solemn. "It's time to go back in."

After a moment of hesitation, Malik took Akefia's hand and managed to get to his feet. Immediately, a sharp pain shot through his legs. Malik managed not to stumble or fall, but he couldn't hide a wince, which Akefia saw.

"Do you think you can walk?" he asked. Malik nodded; the Thief King looked doubtful but nonetheless turned and began to walk back in the direction of the foothills.

The night was mostly spent; there was a faint line of light on the horizon – the first sign of the soon-to-be-rising sun. The brightness had not yet spread to the land – the desert had formed a slight valley at the base of the mountains, which meant it would remain in shadow long after the mountain ranges and flatland had been drenched in the light of day.

Akefia was ahead of him, only faintly discernible in the darkness – and the next moment he had vanished. Malik looked around to see where he might have gone – since he wouldn't just vanish into thin air, would he? Unless Malik's mind was playing tricks on him again.

To his credit, he didn't yell when Akefia's arm suddenly materialized out of the rock and pulled him impatiently inside the cave.

Later it would occur to Malik that he should have put two and two together when Akefia vanished, but in his defense he had been rather disoriented, and Teti-En's spell had been the last thing on his mind.

Once they were back inside the room, Akefia seemed to read Malik's mind, for he immediately lit several more oil lamps. There was the familiar scent of wood smoke and opium in the air and, feeling slightly better, Malik sat on the divan, sinking into the soft golden cushions. He discovered that he really didn't want to know what had happened. He just wanted to go back to sleep as soon as possible.

The lamps, as it turned out, seemed to be more for Akefia's benefit than his own. The room was now well-it, and the Thief King was standing at the foot of the divan, arms folded, looking down at Malik with a slight frown.

"What is it?" Malik asked, feeling like he sounded a bit ridiculous. What it _was_ was obvious; he just wished he could know what the Thief King was thinking.

Akefia said nothing, just kept looking at Malik with that watchful expression, intense and ever so slightly troubled. At length, however, he seemed to have reached a conclusion on what was to be done, and produced a half-full bottle of some dark liquid from the shadowy recesses at the base of the statue, which he held out to Malik.

"Have a drink," he said, sounding not unfriendly.

"No, but thank you very much - " Malik began to reply, when Akefia cut him off abruptly.

"I'm not asking," he muttered, "I'm telling you. Have a drink."

Malik didn't need to be told twice. He took the flask, and as Akefia lay back down across from him, he noticed that he was rubbing his eyes. It was an oddly incongruous gesture, somehow childlike, and it made Malik feel instantly guilty. For _what_, he didn't know, but it was obvious he'd done something to wake the man. On their first night under the same roof, nonetheless. _ And then to collapse like that in front of him…so much for good impressions…._

"You may not be aware of this," Akefia said drily, "but you're actually supposed to_ drink_ alcohol, not cradle it like a baby."

Malik hastily tipped back the flask, and was grateful for the burning sensation it made as it went down his throat. It was stronger than wine, something that tasted like fire and honey mixed together, and he managed not to cough as he set the bottle back down. He shuddered as the warmth filled his veins, blooming in delicious heat somewhere in his chest and spreading outwards to his very fingertips.

"Well, Majesty, now that we're all cozied up," the Thief King said amicably, "would you mind telling me what the hell just happened?"

There was a long moment in which nobody said anything. Malik seemed to be trying to stare a hole through the floor; from this Akefia predicted he wasn't likely to get much useful information. Malik, meanwhile, was trying to wade through his acute embarrassment and see if he could remember anything, but was drawing a blank.

"Your guess is as good as mine," he said at length. His eyes were still on the floor. "Why was I out there?"

Akefia shrugged. "You don't remember anything?" Malik only shook his head.

"Well, you're going to have to give me some context here," said Akefia cagily. "I mean, is this a regular thing with you? Should I expect habitual nighttime forays into the desert?"

"No, no," said Malik anxiously. "It's never happened before. I don't usually do…strange things like that," he trailed off.

Something seemed to be pressing in on his mind, something that didn't want to be held off.

"I think I was dreaming," he said, more to himself than to Akefia.

And then it came back to him, all at once – the sound of the lamp as it shattered and the heavy handle of the knife and the whistle of the blade as it came down. And he remembered – the memory twisting unwanted in his consciousness like a worm in the flesh.

"I killed him," Malik whispered. Hysterical sorrow was rising fast in his chest and try as he might, he couldn't stopper it. "I really killed him."

Akefia was watching him with an unreadable expression in his eyes. Malik swore to himself he would not let the man see him cry. Hadn't he shown himself to be weak enough already? But his sin was before him, grinning in its immediacy. He had long since scrubbed the blood from beneath his fingernails, but he could remember its warm flow over his hands and the thick smell of iron heavy in the air, as if it had been only moments ago…

His eyes were filling with useless tears, and he covered his face. "Holy Ra, forgive me," he pleaded under his breath. "Osiris and Meretseger, forgive me…"

Nothing moved or spoke within the chamber. It was so final, so irreversible_. It isn't fair,_ Malik thought desperately. _The Gods know how screwed up we are. Shouldn't we be allowed a second chance, some kind of opportunity to redeem ourselves? _Shouldn't he be allowed to bring Mahado back to life, to piece him back together like Osiris, and erase the stain of guilt?_ Why tell stories about such things if they're impossible?_

"It was a nightmare, then," he heard Akefia say. He nodded in reply. It was as good a name for it as any, although whatever had happened that night didn't feel like any bad dream he had ever had before. It had been reliving the entire thing. _Maybe that's my punishment_, he thought hopelessly. _ Maybe I won't ever be able to sleep again._

"This is the first time you've killed a man, then." Malik looked up, and was surprised to see wordless understanding in Akefia's grey eyes. His usually animated face was now thoughtful and still.

"Is this what it's going to be like?" The question sprang from his tongue almost before he was aware he was thinking it. His own voice sounded to him shattered and wretched.

"You'll have nightmares for a while," Akefia told him slowly. He seemed to be choosing his words with care. "Maybe even for a long time. But they'll go away eventually." He sighed. "Everything does."

There was the truth, and nothing could be done about it. Akefia would have surprised to know that, nonetheless, Malik was feeling consoled – if only slightly.

"You'll be able to sleep now," he told the younger man. "You won't dream after this."

It worked almost like an incantation. Malik felt his eyelids instantly growing heavier, and an inexplicable sense of relief lifted some of the weight off his chest. There was no earthly reason he should find solace in Akefia's words – after all, the man had just told him he would be having nightmares for perhaps years to come – but something in the straightforward way he'd said it made the noble feel, at least for the moment, slightly less alone.

"Hey – Thief King?"

"Hm?"

"Thank you."

"No problem." Silence, and then: "You know, you can call me Akefia if you want."

And suddenly, for no reason that he could name, Malik felt a spark of happiness. "Akefia…" The sounds of the word rolled off his tongue effortlessly, like a summer breeze. The carefree 'ah' interrupted so abruptly by the guttural, passionate 'k' before the rest of the name was released in one sustained breath, like a spell, a zephyr. It was beautiful.

The thief lay awake for longer than usual, his thoughts circling endlessly like birds of prey. It was clear something strange was going on, but the boy didn't seem to know any more than he did. One thing in particular still gnawed at his mind. He was uncommonly alert, and a very light sleeper. It was extremely unusual, therefore, that he hadn't heard Malik get up and leave the room. He knew he should have woken instantly. This was troublesome, since Akefia didn't like the idea that he was getting careless. There was no explanation for it, save that he was considerably more tired than usual.

What Akefia didn't know was that Malik's feet hadn't quite been touching the floor.

Meanwhile, sleep was beginning to overpower Malik's exhausted brain, and he found his weary thoughts returning, again and again, to that name.

_Akefia_, his mind breathed, drawing out the vowels, enjoying the sound they made, like leaves in the wind. _Akefia, Akefia._

ʘ

Please review?


	6. VI

Okay, so, _funny story_. I had to divide this chapter into two parts, because my first version was over 30 pages (and nobody wants to read chapters that long…) (Also, why do these chapters keep getting longer and longer? Seriously.) So, anyway, here is the first part, and I'll put up the second half of the chapter sometime next week.

I realize chapter 5 raised a lot of questions – and they won't necessarily be answered soon. Meanwhile, enjoy the semi-normalcy! Also, if you guys have any critique of this chapter, let me know (it'll probably help make the next one better!) Warning: this chapter and the next will have a lot of face time with the thieves, so if you don't like them, I apologize. Also, if you're having trouble keeping them straight, I've put a guide to the OCs on my profile if ya need it.

And, as always, I send much affection and gratitude to those who reviewed last time. I genuinely never expected to get so many reviews for this story – let me just say I'm honored. Thank you so much – **Angael, Mittelan, BlueFox of the Moon, Jaims17, Fiver, ltkk022, RemainSilent1, Alug-Andaaz-Hai, Slave to my Pen, ChocolateLizz, Ryou VeRua, Calm Envy, mystralwind, haku fan1, Chibi-Roy-Chan, LadyBlackwell, MokoBunChan, agent lunar, BlackxCinderella, MyraHellsing, Rahuratna, ChaosRocket, Niamy Tak, Holy Metal Muffin of Death, Almond Luver**, and **Spyncr**. You guys rock my AU world!

Also, to clear up any well-founded uncertainty, it is my regret to inform you that I am not, in fact, the owner of YGO. Enjoy!

ʘ

It was early morning, and the streets of the city were still quiet. Curfew was over, and the citizens were just starting their days. The guard on patrol walked quietly through the district – it was one of the poorer neighborhoods in the city. Many of the mud-brick houses were in disrepair – roofs let in the wind, and rats roamed the alleys. There were always rats about at this hour; they were fat from garbage and arrogant enough not to run when he walked by. They would just sit up on their flea-ridden haunches and watch him with their beady eyes as he passed. He could hear people walking around, pottery clanking as wives prepared breakfast. A girl sang off-key in a room somewhere, and the notes floated out her window into the still air.

The sentry wasn't sure anymore how much time had passed; he guessed he'd been at his post for about forty-five hours. Every twelve hours he was assigned to a new neighborhood; they rotated the guard like that, to prevent them getting careless. Normally, he knew, he would be weak, unable to stand anymore, but the commanding officer had given each of the sentries an herb concoction to drink and it helped. Even though his eyes still burned when he closed them, the blood was buzzing through his veins and his mind was alert. He could probably keep going for another day now.

He turned a corner. A thin man in a turban left a house through a side door with a heavy load of grain on his back, and passed the guard by without looking at him. Citizens tended to avoid eye contact, and of course they almost never spoke to him. Sometimes this struck the guard as a little unfair, seeing as how he was doing his job to protect them, but he understood why they were wary.

The man who would have usually replaced him, Tefibi, was no longer present to take over his shift. Of course, the higher-ups hadn't told any of the sentries where Tefibi had gone, but there were rumors going around the barracks that the man had been placed in solitary confinement. The sentry shuddered to think of this. They didn't always remember to feed you in solitary confinement. Sometimes it was just a pretty name for execution - they'd forget all about you until the cell was needed for somebody else. Maybe it was on purpose, and maybe not. Tefibi must have screwed something up bad.

The guard shifted his spear to his other shoulder, eyes automatically scanning the street. People thought all sorts of things about what Tefibi had done. Some thought he'd blatantly disrespected the chief of police. Tefibi was a conscripted prisoner of war, so it wasn't all that implausible, but the sentry, for one, didn't believe it. Tefibi had been only nineteen years old, but he was already a broken man. He was too meek to voice his dissatisfaction. The sentry had heard, in a hushed conversation, that Tefibi had been assigned patrol duty that ill-fated night when the Thief King had returned the kidnapped priestess. Not only had he let the man escape, but according to the infantryman who'd told him, he'd been frozen by fear, and hadn't even tried to attack him. If it was true, it was a grievous dereliction of duty, and the sentry would probably never see him again. He could only feel sorry for Tefibi, and take up his shifts in his absence until his superiors got around to finding somebody else.

The city was in semi-lockdown; nobody was allowed on the streets after midnight, or before six in the morning. Scores of civilians had already been arrested. The Thief King was a looming threat; ever since the old Pharaoh had died and Atemu had taken over the throne, he'd seemed to sense a weakness in the Kingdom of Egypt, and like a shark that smelled blood in the water, he was circling closer and closer to the source. Additionally, the Pharaoh's advisors wanted to take precautions against possible attacks from the South; alliances everywhere were growing shaky (anybody could see that; even an unschooled soldier like him) and to make matters worse, just last week a priest had been murdered. The suspect was still at large in the city, hiding somewhere, he was told - but nobody had found him yet. Commanding officers were getting nervous, and when they got nervous, they got brutal. Meanwhile the guards, like him, were stuck waiting – waiting and watching. The situation couldn't go on like this indefinitely; something was going to have to break. The sentry tried to hold off dread, but it was like a dog that followed you home; every time you gave it a kick it would disappear for a while until before you realized it, it had returned, closer than before, while you'd been looking away.

The sentry stopped and leaned against a wall, letting his eyes close momentarily. This street was still empty for now; nobody would see him. His eyes were on fire; he was half afraid that when he opened them the pain would have burned away his sight. But no; his eyes just watered up instead. The sentry let the tears spill down his unshaven cheeks. They were tears of weariness, not of sorrow. There was no place for sorrow anymore. He started walking again. Somewhere, his wife was waiting for him to come back home, and so he would sweat it out, and hopefully when leave time came he would be able to see her and his son, who must have grown quite a bit since he'd been gone. If he thought about his sleepless nights, if he thought about the herbs they now had to drink, if he thought about Tefibi, if he thought about his son's vanishing childhood, he would get angry. He might get angry at the wrong people, and that would never do. _Save your anger for the enemy, _he told himself. _Once we kill the enemy, we can all go home._

ʘ

Morning brought with it a clear, beautiful emptiness. He opened his eyes, and even though there were no windows in the chamber, Malik knew it was the start of a new day. The air was lighter somehow, quiet and still, and in the slumberous hush he could hear everything – the wind that gently stirred the curtain, the sputter of the hot oil in the still-burning lamps, the soft respirations on the other side of the room.

There was a light aflame in the corner, and it cast a tremulous shadow through the strings of the harp that fell in stripes across the body of the sleeping thief. He was sprawled on his back, head comfortably cushioned against his arm, a tangle of white hair hiding part of his face. The lines of light and darkness moved with him as he breathed – shade pooling in the hollows of his throat, brilliance flickering across the planes of his chest. He looked invulnerable, arrogant even in sleep. Briefly, Malik wondered what it would be like to sleep like that – unafraid, as if nothing and no one could hurt him, even in the night. _Was _it even possible to hurt the man? From the way he carried himself, it seemed it would be easier to throw stones at Ra.

But the scar on his face seemed to suggest otherwise. There were thick, knotted scars on Aminadav's back – it was all too easy to guess where those had come from – and there was a thin, pale line across Nefermaat's throat that told its own story. Every one of the thieves was marked in some way, a testament to the life he led. But the Thief King's scar alone was a mystery. Who could have come close enough to inflict it? Who would have dared?

The last misty vestiges of slumber still clung to Malik's mind as he gazed at the other man. _Akefia, _he thought suddenly, the memory bright as a burst of sparks. _He said I could call him Akefia._

Without warning, something else came to mind. Malik was almost afraid to, but he looked, and there it was on the floor beside him – the bottle from last night.

Just like that, the scene in the desert rushed back to the forefront of his consciousness – startling in its clarity. The dizzying feeling was fresh in his memory – how he hadn't been sure for a moment where he was standing, or if the horizon was right side up. The stinging in his eyes, the searing in his lungs, the camel before him, buzzing with decay in the moonlight. He stared at the bottle. It had all really happened. He remembered somehow that afterward he had been close to tears – or maybe he had actually even wept. A surge of such vehement self-disgust rose in him that it was all he could do to keep from cursing himself aloud. Oh, and Akefia…Akefia would remember it all, he was sure of that.

Malik, under the right circumstances, was capable of being an extremely lazy person. If no immediate circumstances prevented him from doing so, he was generally perfectly happy remaining in bed for as long as an hour after he woke up, absently observing his thoughts the way a child watches minnows in still water. But this time, for once, he didn't want to be alone with his reflections. With the Thief King asleep, no distractions were forthcoming, and besides, Malik wasn't sure he was capable of facing him again right away after the strange night that had just passed. Quietly, he got to his feet. He turned, and headed out of the chamber, hoping to find something else to occupy his thought – or would have, had not a nearby hand suddenly shot out and closed around his ankle.

With a noise of surprise (for the sake of his precarious self-esteem, Malik told himself it had definitely been a _dignified_ noise) he spun around, only just managing to regain his balance, and stared in shock down at the interference.

The interference stared back somewhat critically, sharp-eyed considering the fact that he had (to external appearances) been sleeping soundly not a moment ago. "Leaving again so soon?" he asked.

Malik just blinked.

"And without even so much as a good morning," the Thief King continued dolefully. "Do I really mean so little to you, Majesty?"

It was a good thing Akefia could keep a straight face when he wanted to; otherwise he would have burst out laughing at the indignant look that appeared on the noble's face.

"I didn't even know you were awake!" Malik complained in his own defense.

"I'm always awake," the thief replied smoothly. "Even when I'm asleep."

"I'll keep that in mind…" Malik eyed him with suspicion. It didn't seem possible for a human being to wake up that quickly. The logical conclusion to be drawn, of course, was that he had only been pretending...but to what end? It was possible, he supposed, that the man never really slept at all, but this was a rather troubling thought.

Akefia chuckled, a deep bass rumble that started somewhere in his chest. "Relax, Majesty. You'll kill yourself if you don't lighten up once in a while. Now sit down, I want to talk to you."

At those simple words, Malik's face went in a second from mildly distressed to guarded. It was like a wall had gone up somewhere behind his eyes. Unconsciously, the noble glanced towards the entrance of the chamber, as if judging whether it might be worthwhile to make a run for it. This evasive glance was not lost on the thief.

_Interesting,_ thought Akefia. He had been debating whether to tell Malik the details of what had gone on the previous night – he'd been hoping to shed some illumination on the mystery, but didn't want to risk causing Malik unnecessary stress. However, in the space of a moment, he decided against it. Last night his new charge had seemed so vulnerable…still was, no doubt, but now Akefia wondered. Did he really remember nothing? _ Let's wait and see…_

Meanwhile, Malik had obediently taken a seat on the edge of the divan and was now watching Akefia, eyes wide, as if ready to run at the first sign of danger. The thief thought, with some amusement, that he looked rather like a nervous gazelle.

"Would you stop fidgeting with that thing?"

Malik dropped the hem of his tunic sleeve with some reluctance.

"Now," said the Thief King. "How are you?"

The words were simple, straightforward at first, but Malik didn't miss the shrewd tone of voice, the unspoken message. He knew Akefia wanted an explanation, but he didn't have one. How pathetic he must seem to the Thief King now, how strange, how weak...

"I'm fine," the younger man said, trying to sound nonchalant. But his voice came out unsure, even to himself.

Malik got the uncanny sense he was being sized up. Akefia's attention was so focused it was almost piercing, and his grey eyes were cold, scrutinizing him carefully, as if Malik was a complicated trap he was trying to disable.

"If you say so, Majesty," was all he said in reply.

What Akefia really wanted to know was what had happened with the priest, but it was clear he wasn't likely to get a straight story out of Malik at this point. He'd get his information later, he knew. He'd make sure of that. And he didn't mind waiting.

He knew, too, that things often took on a phantom significance in the middle of the night that disappeared with morning. People were stranger by the light of the moon. Perhaps the incident in the desert was inconsequential, and maybe not. Only time would tell. _If he's covering something up, the stress will break him down sooner or later, and if not,_ the Thief King thought to himself, _well, no harm done._

Malik leaned back against the wall and dropped his eyes to the floor. Suspicious minds seemed to follow him wherever he went, and it was making him tired. It was not the weariness that could be eased by sleep; it went deeper than that.

"Strange things happen all the time," he said quietly. "It didn't mean anything."

And it was the truth, wasn't it? He'd killed somebody, started life in exile, had some kind of nightmare – not ideally where he'd envisioned his life ending up, but there it was. All he wanted to do was to clear the air between him and Akefia, and hopefully not ever have to bring it up again.

_So anxious to convince me, aren't you, Majesty? _

"Very well." Akefia said it so lightly that Malik looked up at him again suddenly and frowned, confused at the change in tone.

"What?"

The Thief King leaned on his elbow and raised an eyebrow at Malik. "Why do you look so surprised? I believe you."

Malik knew what belief looked like, and it was nowhere in the Thief King's eyes. There was no earthly reason he could think of for why he should feel betrayed by this, but he did.

"That's a lie," he accused Akefia.

"Isn't that what you wanted to hear?" A smile appeared on the Thief King's face, quick and pitiless as the flash of a whip. "Eye for an eye, Majesty. First you told me you weren't afraid, and then you told me you were _fine_." He drawled the last word mockingly.

A reply was ready on Malik's tongue – he was just about to argue that those hadn't been lies; he had not lied once, in fact, the whole time he'd been there – but suddenly he found himself wondering, why did it matter so much after all? Damn Akefia if he didn't want to believe him. It wasn't Malik's problem.

"Tooth for a tooth then," he returned caustically, before he thought better of it. "In that case I suppose you think you owe me another lie."

Akefia didn't seem fazed. "What makes you think I haven't already settled our account?"

"So how do you expect me to believe anything you say?"

"Should you anyway?"

He had a point.

"_You,_ however, still owe _me_." Akefia yawned and stretched, looking like nothing so much as a big cat. "So what do you say, Majesty? Ready for your first day as my new lackey?"

ʘ

The task that lay before him was so simple.

So simple, and yet so daunting.

_Go tell that lot of bums out there to make themselves useful,_ had been Akefia's exact words. He made it sound so easy, Malik thought with no small measure of resentment. The problem with that was that all of the thieves were still asleep, and clearly it was going to be Malik's job to change that state of affairs. Akefia wasn't up himself – _the Thief King sleeps as long as he damn well pleases,_ he'd declared, before dozing off again. In Malik's opinion, this was more than slightly hypocritical, but he kept his mouth shut. He considered trying to stall for time, but in the end steeled himself to the task at hand. The sooner he got it over with, the better.

Luck was on his side, however.

"Oh hello," said Zazamoukh. He'd woken as soon as Malik stepped into his chamber and was now sitting up in a pile of blankets, rubbing his eyes. His curly hair was sticking up every which way. "Up bright and early, I see."

Zazamoukh's own store of treasure was scattered in haphazard piles around his room, which was rather bare and nondescript compared to the opulence of the Thief King's chamber. The exception to this, Malik noticed, was a bust of some long-dead queen that stood against the opposite wall. Zazamoukh apparently had taken to using it as a receptacle for all his nicest jewelry; as a result the chipped statue was laden with necklaces and numerous headdresses so precariously stacked they looked as if they might fall over any minute.

"Who's she?"

Zaza shrugged. "I forgot. I just call her Nubiti."

The golden lady. Well, that made sense.

Malik cleared his throat. "Akefia told me to tell you - "

"I know, I know," Zaza broke in with a smile. "Look sharp, get busy. Right?" He got to his feet and yawned, muttering something about breakfast as he left the chamber.

The task of waking the rest of the men, when he got right down to it, wasn't actually too bad. Kawab was next; unfortunately he was suffering an evil hangover as a souvenir of the previous night. His room was pitch-black and when Malik pulled aside the curtain he gave an inarticulate bellow and buried his face in his blankets.

"Time to get up," Malik said, as encouragingly as he could.

"Five more minutes," came the muffled reply. After the fourth entreaty, however, Malik was beginning to get exasperated and suggested as gently as he could that the Thief King might be getting up soon. This had an immediate effect; although Kawab grumbled and groused mightily, he stumbled to his feet and (with a hand clamped firmly over his eyes) left the room.

Siamun, however, rose to greet the day uncomplainingly, and Aminadav even graced him with a 'good morning'.

Teti-En proved slightly more difficult. He required a good deal of prodding, and when he was finally at a point where he was half-awake, sat up and began swearing at Malik - calling him a crocodile-headed son of a bitch and informing him belligerently that he had hidden his offspring throughout the fertile valley, and also in his pockets.

"But if I know my offspring are in your pockets," Malik pointed out reasonably, "they're not hidden anymore, are they?"

This practical observation seemed to bring the green-eyed thief back to reality. After a moment, he seemed to remember who Malik was and apologized profusely. Malik accepted the apology without complaint. The thief was about to leave when he appeared to think of something and turned back.

"I don't suppose you've seen any griffins around this morning?"

"No, sorry."

Teti-En nodded as if he'd been expecting this. "Bastards tend to be invisible these days," he explained in conspiratorial tones, before sleepily padding away.

At last, there was only one more thief left to rouse. Malik hesitated for a moment before pushing aside the curtain and stepping into Nefermaat's chamber.

At first, he didn't see any treasure lying around, which struck him as odd – until he realized why. Nefermaat was on top of it.

He had arranged his loot into one heap, decadently covered with cushions and blankets and leopard skins. This was where the sleeping thief was now sprawled in luxurious fashion – face down, braids scattered every which way. Malik wasn't sure whether this unorthodox sleeping arrangement was meant to safeguard his ill-gotten bounty, or whether it was intended as a monument to the man's debauchery. Possibly it was both.

"Go away," Nefermaat mumbled languorously, without looking up.

"But you have to get up." Malik's attempt at sounding stern was somewhat lamentable.

Nefermaat looked up at the sound of his voice. "Oh, hello cutie," he said with a winning smile. "Why didn't you say it was you?"

Malik blinked. "What did you just call me?" He wasn't sure whether to be confused or affronted, but confusion seemed to be winning out.

This only earned a laugh from Nefermaat. "My apologies, _Majesty._ Do you like that better?"

Truth be told, Malik had gotten somewhat used to the Thief King's nickname (by no means did he approve of it) but coming from Nefermaat it sounded completely…_wrong_, and somehow inappropriate.

He frowned. "I like my name better."

"Remind me."

"It's Malik."

"_Malik, Malik, Maliky Malik_," Nefermaat singsonged. "Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it? I'll have to think of a better name for you."

"That's fine, really," said Malik (thinking his name rolled off the tongue just fine). "Well, now you're up, I'll just leave you alone…"

A bejeweled hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. "I have a better idea," the thief said silkily. "Why don't we get to know each other a little better? Get to be friends, eh?"

Malik studied the Nubian carefully. He didn't trust the man's intentions, that was certain. Yet he didn't want to react too abruptly. It would never do to start his second day with the thieves having already made a mortal enemy, would it? Besides, he had no idea how Nefermaat might react should he do or say something rash. Right now the thief was putting on a show of mock sincerity – his voice was deceptively soft, and that smile made him look as harmless as a lion with its claws sheathed. In other words, not harmless at all. His hands were bony but his grip was strong. It was morning, and Malik wasn't alone, which made for a measure of reassurance, but he was still careful. Malik didn't allow the man to draw him any nearer, but neither did he try to pull away.

"Why don't we get to be friends outside," he suggested warily.

Nefermaat grinned. "Sharp, aren't you? Just the type of quality I like in a friend…"

Now the thief _was_ pulling him closer. Malik had the brief, ridiculous feeling that he was caught in a twisted game of tug of war. He felt rather sorry for himself. First that less-than-pleasant exchange with the Thief King that morning, and now this? He'd woken up in such a _good_ mood, too…

"You don't have to be so skittish, you know," the thief was saying. "I'm a nice guy."

"Look," Malik interjected nervously. "Akefia just said to tell you to get busy. Other than that I have no - "

Nefermaat rolled his eyes. "Akefia, Akefia, _Akefia_," he repeated dismally. "Can we not talk about Akefia for one goddamn minute? King of _Thieves,_ Scourge of _Egypt_, Terror of the Upper _World_, Fury of the _Desert,_ Devastator of _Women_, yadda yadda. I'm sick of hearing about it. Forget about him for a while."

Malik blinked. "I'm pretty sure he just heard you. He's standing right outside."

In an instant Nefermaat's honey-colored eyes widened alarmingly. The blood drained from his face.

"What?" he faltered. In his shock his grip on Malik's wrist had loosened, and the noble seized the opportunity to nimbly slip away. Before the Nubian could react, Malik had already disappeared out of reach to the other side of the curtain.

Malik had retreated to a safe distance before Nefermaat stuck his head out of his chamber. He scanned the area, and after ascertaining that Akefia was, in fact, nowhere to be found, his eyes alighted on Malik and narrowed.

"You'll pay for that," he said ominously, before retreating again.

He suspected he should be filled with dread, but despite logic, Malik was having an awfully hard time not breaking out in laughter.

"Care to tell me what that was all about?" Zaza had approached him from behind.

"Oh, nothing." Malik had a rather goofy smirk on his face.

Zaza eyed him inquisitively. "Why were you in there anyway?"

"Had to wake him up."

Zaza pondered this. "You know, I'd be careful in there if I were you. He'll proposition anything with a heartbeat."

_Thanks for the heads-up_, Malik thought. For some reason this thought made him feel like laughing again.

ʘ

Breakfast was dates and beer with honey. Together it was almost unbearably sweet, but Malik was starving and wolfed it down so fast he barely noticed. He hadn't eaten in quite a long time, but despite his hunger he was full before he wanted to be. He was parched, so he ended up drinking more than he usually did. The beer wasn't strong, but Malik had always had a weak head for alcohol and so this resulted in a rather warm, happy feeling which, if he was going to be honest, he didn't mind at all.

The desert in the morning was even more beautiful than Malik had expected it to be, but it was also a little frightening. The stars were still visible overhead, but with the growing light they had been reduced to dim pinpricks of light, like dying embers in a fire. The vaulted skies were churning blue and lavender and orange, unfathomably deep. The last traces of nighttime chill still lingered in the ground and in the rocks, but it would be gone in a few hours. The sun seemed so close he felt he could practically reach out and touch it – suspended there like an ornament, a flat disc the sodden color of blood. The wind had blown the sand smooth as a baby's forehead. The dunes he remembered from last night were no longer there; new ones had appeared in other places. The air was crisp, and he could see for miles and miles into the distance to the point where the feverish light of the young sun blended the horizon with the sky.

Gone was the menace that seemed to creep up when night fell – by the light of the glaring sun, the mystery of the desert seemed less immediate, more profound and difficult to grasp, like halfway formed shapes at the edge of your vision that fled when you turned your head to look. The shadows of night had fled; in the limpid morning everything was visible. This only seemed to make what was not visible more concealed, like a secret hidden behind a smile.

Looking out of the cave entrance, Malik saw beyond a ridge of sand something glimmering far off in the distance. It was a body of water, surrounded by sand, yet so vast it seemed almost unreal. It was far larger than any of the artificial ponds he had seen in the city; it had to be a lake (something he had never seen but had read about in accounts of foreign travels). The new sunlight gleamed off the surface of the water, shattering into a million diamond scintillations that winked at him from afar, elusive and bright as a promise.

He didn't notice that Akefia had walked up behind him until he felt a hand settle itself on his shoulder and a voice spoke from his side.

"Enjoying the view, Majesty?"

He didn't jump as he normally would have (he attributed this to the happy beer feeling and wondered vaguely if maybe he should start drinking more).

"How long does it take to get there?" he asked. He didn't need to specify where 'there' was; Akefia had already followed his line of sight and was now gazing at the lake in the distance, where it hid behind the uneven mountains of sand.

"Quite a while, I'm afraid," the Thief King replied, a smile curving his lips. "It's not real."

Malik squinted at the vision to see it better. It didn't seem possible, it was right there…

"Just a mirage," the man went on to explain dispassionately. "A trick of the light. It's there most mornings, but it's always gone by noon."

"I've never seen anything like that before," Malik said, partly to himself. Try as he might to convince his mind it was an illusion, some part of his brain refused to believe it. Especially when the wind seemed to ripple the surface like that… "It's beautiful."

"That it might be," said the Thief King with a shrug. "But in the end it's just more bloody sand. Now." He gave Malik's shoulder a squeeze and turned back into the cave. "Follow me. I've got something more useful you can do with your time."

ʘ

Malik stared at the pile of treasure in front of him.

The pile was roughly the same height he was (and that was standing, not sitting). It consisted of the spoils brought back from the raid in Edfu; the thieves had unloaded it all the previous night and stacked it in a communal heap towards the back of the cave where it now waited, a gleaming hoard, like some lustrous sleeping beast. It was huge, it was shiny, it was expensive, it was…

"Your project for the next few hours," said the Thief King, before leaving him alone with the treasure.

Back to staring at the thing. Akefia had instructed him to separate everything according to content. One heap for coins and gold, one for jewelry and gems, and one for everything else (the "everything else" ranged from small statues to incense to clothing to weapons to artifacts Malik couldn't even begin to guess at).

All right. He could do this. This was easy. He was no stranger to menial tasks (although organizing the stolen bounty of tomb robbers wasn't quite what he'd call _menial_). It would probably take him a while, but he was grateful to have something to occupy himself with.

The first hour went well. He came up with the bright idea of separating the coins and jewelry into some of the empty chests that the thieves had tossed to the side (and congratulated himself on his systematization). The coins were of every different metal, copper and silver and gold, and at first Malik considered separating them by country of origin until it occurred to him that if he did that he'd probably be working into tomorrow. His hands worked busily, and as the minutes passed he felt himself gradually regaining a sense of normalcy. Around the cave, the thieves were busy too – Nefermaat still hadn't gotten up (Akefia must have noticed but he hadn't said anything so far). However, Aminadav and Siamun were outside feeding the horses, and Teti-En was sitting nearby with a bucket of water, humming to himself contentedly and cleaning what appeared to be dried blood from the weapons the thieves had brought back from the journey. Akefia and Kawab were outside as well, chopping wood from what he could hear. The sorting of treasure was thirstier work than he'd expected it to be, but Zazamoukh thoughtfully stopped by with some beer after a while (thereby prolonging the happy mood).

The treasure gave off a warm, golden glow, but it was cold in his hands. There were riches galore in the palace, of course, but there was something particularly striking about seeing everything piled up in one place like this, and something wondrous, too, about feeling the weight of gold in his hands, seeing the hard brilliance of emerald, the honeyed fire of carnelian, the clear blue shadows of lapis lazuli. Had it all come from the Edfu temple, or had they raided tombs as well? He'd heard rumors aplenty, and knew that the thieves sometimes robbed the homes of the aristocracy; perhaps at this very moment some distraught noblewoman was missing this malachite necklace he had in his hand right now. It was green banded with black, dark as the plants that grew in the shade. Or maybe they had stolen it from one who was already dead.

Malik had grown up with stories and legends about the Thief King and other bands of robbers that roamed the land of Egypt; grown up terrified of them. Long before he'd been old enough to understand anything, he'd heard people talking about the Thief King – from the priests to the servants to the merchants in the bazaar. Stories abounded of his bloodthirsty ways - the terrible things he'd done, the people he'd killed, and the dead he'd robbed of eternal life. Their voices, speaking of him, would be as awed and as solemn as those left in the wake of a typhoon.

The Kingdom of Egypt was mighty – it was the footprint of God in the lonely desert, unequalled in all the world. Its strength was in its ingenuity and its organization, and how could it be so except by being rigid? Society was structured down to the last detail, from the Pharaoh on down to the slaves, and sometimes, in his teenage years, Malik had been overwhelmed by the nagging sense that his life had been predetermined by his circumstances before he was born. There was a structure, and your place in it was certain and defined as the cell in a bee's honeycomb. How was it that these men he'd grown up hearing of had managed to break free?

It was alluring, no doubt, and sometimes his imagination would run wild. And yet, he remembered always being afraid of them. Once, when he was a child, he'd been tagging along with a group of sometime friends – palace kids, who were generally bored witless and always looking for something troublesome to do. Tired of the city, they'd taken it into their heads to go exploring in the desert, a forbidden realm. Yet when they'd pleaded with the guard at the gate to let them go exploring (within eyesight, of course) he'd just shaken his head with a smile.

_Silly kids,_ he'd said, _don't you know the thieves will get you?_ Eyes wide, they shook their heads, hoping to hear more.

_They ride around out in the desert, looking for victims. If they caught you out there, _the guard said, pointing at one of the boys, _they'd cut off your head with one swipe. And if they came across you_, he added, indicating a girl,_ they'd steal you away and nobody would ever hear from you again._

_But why?_ Malik remembered asking. _We're just kids._

_They're evil,_ the guard said, suddenly serious. _Don't try to understand people who are evil. You can't do it. Run along home now._

After that, the children tended to stay away from the gate.

He would never know what this malachite necklace had been through to get here, he realized. Whose heart had been broken, whose blood had been spilled. And then he realized he'd been holding the same necklace for the last five minutes. With a sigh, he reminded himself to stop his mind from wandering, and continued with his work.

By the second hour, he was starting to feel a little antsy. He'd been working relentlessly, but could perceive only a discouragingly slight dent in the pile of riches. His legs were starting to cramp from sitting in the same position for so long, so he moved. Akefia stopped by to see how he was doing, and seemed pleased with his progress.

"Having fun, Majesty?"

Malik acceded with a nod of his head. Actually, he was quite glad he'd been entrusted with some degree of responsibility, however slight. He'd been starting to feel useless, and it was good to be earning his keep – or working towards it, anyway.

"Splendid," said Akefia, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "I think I'll have you count everything tomorrow."

Maybe he shouldn't have said he was having fun.

By the third hour, Malik was definitely bored. Zazamoukh had come by to talk to him, and that had temporarily alleviated the tedium, but after the thief left, Malik thought he could almost feel his mind falling asleep from disuse, in the same way his legs were now feeling tingly from remaining motionless for so long. He'd filled up multiple chests at this point, but still the pile was diminishing at an alarmingly slow rate.

Mekhu, the thin-faced treasurer, had returned at some point in the intervening time, looking rather road-weary and dusty from traveling. His eyes lighted on Malik almost as soon as he stepped into the cave.

"What's he doing?" he asked sharply, indicating the noble with a motion of his head.

"Saving _you_ a lot of work," the Thief King replied congenially.

He could almost hear the gears clicking in Mekhu's head. "Hm. I suppose I should thank him."

"You should thank _me_. You think he's doing it by choice?"

Mekhu smirked at that. The Thief King shot Malik a wink.

The fourth hour was hell. He'd ceased any sort of conscious acknowledgement of the treasure, and indeed barely looked at it as he worked. Akefia didn't miss the effect the growing tedium was having on Malik. From time to time his eyes would glaze over in boredom as he continued to sort the treasure semi-automatically. Then something would happen – Teti-En would throw another polished sword on the pile with a clank, or Zaza would knock something over, and he'd give a start and look up again, suddenly alert, trying not to seem like he'd just been zoning out. It was all very amusing as far as Akefia was concerned.

The Thief King was seated with Mekhu and Aminadav around the fire pit, and they were already making plans for the next raid. It was to be some time in the future, but in Akefia's opinion, nothing bad ever came from planning in advance. The three men were conferring over some architectural blueprints and floor plans, drawing up a plan step by step and hashing out their strategies. All his thieves were astute in different ways; Aminadav had a particular knack for helping come up with a solid course of action, and Mekhu could be counted upon to immediately spot any potential problems with the proposed strategy. Akefia attributed this to the man's natural pessimism. It served him well.

From time to time, he would catch Malik glancing jealously over in their direction – curious as to what they were discussing and no doubt longing to bear witness to some piece of the action. He was still too shy to ask what they were talking about, even though he obviously wanted to. Akefia thought this was rather funny as well. He knew the boy wouldn't be able to follow a word of what they were saying. As soon as he'd left the city walls, all his instruction, all his book knowledge, all his Phoenician and his Greek had been rendered instantly useless. A different kind of knowledge was needed to survive here, and Malik would have to start to relearn everything he'd ever known.

Meanwhile, Malik was growing slightly resentful about the station he'd been reduced to. He'd been trying to overhear what Akefia was talking about with the others, but the conversation was taking place _just _below the threshold of hearing. This annoyed Malik to no end. There was something interesting going on, and here he was, stuck sorting treasure of all things. The novelty had long since worn off, regrettably. At first he'd been happy to do something useful, but there were so much _more_ useful things he could be doing.

Malik was so caught up in mulling over this indignity that he didn't bother to look at what he was doing. His hand landed on something cold and yielding and almost clammy – something that definitely wasn't treasure. Surprised, he looked down at it.

Mekhu and Aminadav had started to argue about something, but just then, an anguished cry sounded from Malik's direction.

When Akefia came over to investigate, the noble's eyes were wide and he looked as if he might be quite close to being physically ill. He said nothing, but simply pointed to the pile of treasure. Or, more specifically, to something _on_ the pile of treasure.

"Oh, _hel_lo," Akefia said, sounding pleased. He picked up the severed hand. "I was wondering where this thing had gotten to."

Malik was temporarily speechless. Akefia was touching the unholy thing, actually holding it in his bare hands, examining the gummed-over wound at the wrist.

"Sword needed sharpening," he muttered begrudgingly.

Malik shuddered, revolted and at the same time unable to look away. "What on earth was it doing in there?" he asked, finally finding his voice.

Akefia showed him the hand up close. He recoiled at first but then he noticed a ring glittering on the dead grey finger. It was in the shape of a scarab beetle, meticulously carved of milky green chalcedony, and set in gold. Some jeweler must have taken weeks, if not months, to make it. The beetle was only carved of stone, but some trick of the light made it look as if life flared within its opalescent depths.

"Nice, eh?" Akefia inspected it again. "Not exactly the kind of trinket you'd expect to find on the hand of a common guard. Must have had friends in high places." He chuckled to himself and wrenched the ring off the finger. Malik heard a crack and winced. "Not that it helped him much in the end."

Zazamoukh wandered by, noticed the ring, and let out a low, impressed whistle. "Can I have that?" he asked, with a hopeful grin.

"You can have this," the Thief King replied, offering him the hand instead.

"No, thanks."

"Deal of a lifetime."

"I'll pass."

Akefia frowned at the hand, as if trying to divine what should be done with it. He should probably get rid of it, but for some reason he was reluctant to let it go. You never knew what could be useful. All at once a brilliant idea struck him.

Malik looked on, befuddled, as Akefia approached the chamber where Nefermaat was (miraculously) still asleep. Quiet as air, he seemed almost to melt inside. A moment passed, then two, and he reemerged, looking pleased with himself. As if nothing had happened, he rejoined the strategy conference and took up the discussion with Aminadav and Mekhu once again. Aminadav glanced at Nefermaat's chamber and Malik saw him whisper a question to Akefia, but it went unanswered.

Gingerly, Malik picked up the scarab ring from the pile. He fervently hoped the Thief King had made off with the hand _after_ he'd killed the guard, rather than before. Putting it out of his mind, he went back to sorting the treasure. What else was there to do?

Not long after that, the Thief King got astride his black stallion and rode away without bidding anyone farewell. It was around noon by then, the ground so hot it sent up wavy fissures in the air, like ripples of water. Nearby, Zazamoukh was watching him leave. The expression on his face made him look older somehow.

"Where's he going?"

Zaza looked around suddenly at the sound of his voice, as if he'd forgotten Malik was there, and then he gave a short laugh. "Could be the other side of the world, for all I know."

Malik watched his form, receding into the distance. It was getting harder and harder to make him out. His head felt heavy.

"He's coming back, right?" It might have been a foolish thing to ask, but Malik was wary of taking anything for granted these days.

Zaza nodded. "Yes. It might be a couple of hours, it might be a couple of days. Might even be a couple of weeks, that's happened before. But he'll be back." The thief gave him a smile that was meant to be encouraging, but the muted sorrow Malik had seen in his eyes the previous day was there again. Maybe it had never really left.

They had lunch, and then Malik went back to the mind-numbing task at hand. Zaza sat cross-legged nearby, carving strips of leather out of an animal hide. After a while he started humming to himself quietly, gazing out into the desert. After a while Malik recognized the melody – although where he'd heard it before, he couldn't remember. The tune was gentle and hazy, rising and falling with a mesmerizing cadence. Something about it was sweetly haunting, and it awoke something deep in Malik's consciousness. It was an old song about a sick man, remembering his sister, who had gone away. When she spoke, the sound of her voice gave him strength, said the man in the song. And when she took him in her arms, she drove evil away.

ʘ

From time to time Malik or somebody else refers to "God" instead of "Gods" – this is because the Ancient Egyptians thought that everything (including other gods) emanated from one god to begin with. This was probably a conception that was confined to people educated in theology – priests, etc. – rather than one that was familiar to the population at large.

And Nefermaat made half those nicknames up. =)

Comments? Criticism? Feedback of any kind? I'd love to hear it!


	7. VII

Another long chapter! Yay! I hope you like this one, it has lots of Akefia and Malik goodness just in time for the weekend.

A big thank you and much love to everybody who reviewed last time – **Angael, ChaosRocket, LadyBlackwell, Jaims17, Calm Envy, Spyncr, BlackxCinderella, ChocolateLizz, Niamy Tak, haku fan1, BlueFox of the Moon, ltkk022,** and **Almond Luver**. You guys are awesome! Last chapter wasn't my favorite so far, but I'm a lot happier with this one. Thanks for keeping my morale up!

A warning for those with allergies: onions, slight impropriety and storytelling to ensue!

Disclaimer: I don't own YuGiOh, some middle aged guy does. Middle aged guys own everything, don't you know?

ʘ

It really was too bad that Akefia left when he did, it turned out. If he'd stayed half an hour longer he would have gotten to witness Nefermaat's graceless awakening.

First, there was a distraught howl that resounded throughout the cave, then a muffled thump as of a flailing body falling to the floor. Malik and the other thieves watched as Nefermaat came blundering through the curtain, clawing at something behind his back.

"I can't get it out, I can't get it out," he was repeating – this was followed by a string of feverish, unintelligible Nubian.

Realization dawned on Aminadav's face. "So _that's_ where it went!" he exclaimed, with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.

The knots in his braids were rather complicated, but eventually a patient Siamun managed to undo them and extract the problematic disembodied hand. Nefermaat, meantime, had calmed down somewhat, and had the good sense to look mortified. He was still a bit dismayed, though, and Kawab used the opportunity to mutter something about superstitious Nubians that went unchallenged. The general consensus seemed to be that Nefermaat had richly deserved it – firstly, for being a useless layabout, and secondly for having his hair in such a ridiculous style to begin with. Teti-En pulled out his axe and generously proposed giving him a haircut; the offer was ungraciously refused.

"There's gonna be some kind of curse," Nefermaat lamented. "You'll all see."

Some time after that, Malik finally, _finally_ finished sorting the last of the treasure. It was mid-afternoon by then. He felt extremely pleased with himself and vowed to revel in this sense of accomplishment for as long as it lasted. He stood up, stretched, rubbed his hands together, and then realized he felt somewhat grimy. More than that, actually, he realized he couldn't remember the last time he'd bathed (when had he had the opportunity, after all?) He could practically see the layer of dirt that must have accumulated on his skin. _Disgusting._ "I can't believe I didn't tell you yesterday," Zaza said when Malik hesitantly asked him where (or really, _if_) the thieves bathed. "There's an oasis right over there."

It was only ten minutes away by foot, Zaza told him, due east, just over a ridge of black rock. The rock looked isolated out there, but it was probably connected beneath the sand to the low foothills – like an island offshore from the Nile. There was plenty of time to go and come back before the sun set. Akefia was gone, the day was winding down, and nobody else seemed much inclined to give him anything else to do, so Malik immediately set out.

The sand slipped around in between his toes as he crossed the softly rolling dunes. On his right was the mountain range, and on his left, the lonesome stretches of sand extended into immeasurable distance. After a while, it seemed the further away from the cave he got, the smaller he became. Human beings might dwindle to nothing out here. When he looked out over the wasteland, there was an unobstructed view of the horizon that seemed almost to curve at the edges. Whenever he turned his head, though, the horizon straightened out, so that he was unable to tell whether the land was actually curved, or whether it was just another trick the desert was playing on his eyes.

The Thief King was alone out here too somewhere, probably far away by now. He'd taken off without a word, without a backward glance. Malik's mind was of the analytical sort, and so he was forever picking away at problems, searching out reasons for everything. At first he'd worried that perhaps he was the reason for Akefia's departure – maybe he hadn't been working fast enough, or maybe it had something to do with last night. At heart, however, he knew he had nothing to do with it. There was a kind of change that had come over the man, as if everyone and everything around him had suddenly become not only invisible, but had vanished altogether, as far as he was concerned. No amount of reasoning, he knew, could work out why. The Thief King's motives were as inscrutable and as secret as the patterns of stars behind a cloud. Malik wondered if he ever got lonely.

Because even when he was in the midst of others, there were times when the Thief King seemed to Malik to be in a remote world of his own creation. Because even though he was a man who laughed unrestrained, who gave orders as if the Gods themselves would have to obey – there was a different look that sometimes surrounded him, in the space of his silences. His face would become still, grave as a prophet's, and his thoughts would seem to depart, like a soul after death, to some solitary height. Sometimes Malik would find himself stealing glances at the Thief King, when he didn't think he'd be seen, hoping to catch a glimpse of that infrequent look. It drew him without his knowing why, the way dry blossoms are drawn into the current of the wind.

The jagged black stones kept tripping him up as he climbed the ridge. He stole a glance back at the thieves' cave, a hollowing out in the side of a low mountain. Malik didn't think he'd been walking very long at this point, and the cave was farther away than he'd expected it to be. Two of the men – he was too far away to see who they were – were walking somewhere farther away down the mountain, in the opposite direction. Outside, the horses stood sleepily in the meager shade, flicking their tails every now and again to keep off flies.

Finally, he made it to the top of the ridge. The landscape beyond had for some time been hidden from his view but now he saw the glittering oasis that lay beyond – and it was more beautiful a sight to Malik's eyes than all the treasure the thieves had stolen.

There was a dip in the landscape, a slight valley, and in its center was a calm pool of water. It was bigger than he had expected, and so crystal bright that its blue reflection of the sky outshone the real one. Its source was an underground spring; around the edges of the oasis there had grown patches of grass as well as seven date-palms that swayed lazily overhead.

He approached the edge, and stepped into the water. It was warm from the sun, and he sank into it, letting it envelop him like an embrace. It was deeper than he'd thought it would be, so he slipped out of his tunic and left it to dry on the shore. The water came up to his shoulders. It was wonderfully clear; he could see all the way to the sandy bottom of the oasis.

As he rubbed the dirt from his skin, he found his thoughts turning to sad things, as they often did when he was alone. The cares of the day had distracted him thus far, but now he began wondering about Ishizu, and if she was alright. He didn't have her gift of sight, he knew, and so he could only guess and hope. She was in danger because she'd helped him escape. He had faith that she was smart enough to evade punishment, but all the intelligence in the world could only go so far if luck failed her. Even if they both lived, in all likelihood, he knew, he would never see her again. Helpless pain gnawed away at him; for the loss of his sister, Malik knew, he had only himself to blame. He missed her terribly. He'd seen her last four days ago, by his estimation, but it seemed like an eternity. She was already sinking into the filmy past, like a ball that had been accidentally dropped down a well.

But then, he was suddenly watching himself from outside, and he could feel his emotions losing their edge. The pain receded into the chambers of his heart, leaving a somewhat dull numbness. Maybe it was the intuition of a weary consciousness, knowing enough than to spiral into despair. He didn't have the luxury of doing that; if he sank, who would catch him?

_Dear Ishizu,_ he thought vaguely, composing a letter in his mind he knew he would never be able to send. _You should visit the desert sometime. I know you've traveled through it on your way to other places, but you should really stop somewhere, just spend a few days out here and see what it's like. It's not what you think, I promise you._

_You probably think it's hot and dry and dead, and you'd be half-right - but it's freezing at night, and there are animals here that come out from nowhere when the sun goes down. There are lakes out here too. They're not real lakes, though. _

_You probably think it's lonely out here, and it is. If you were here, it would be all right, but you're not. Like right now – except it seems that sometimes, if you get lonely enough, you start to get a feeling like someone else is there. You probably have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm not sure I do. Things stop making sense here. _

_I remember dreaming about Mahado last night. Does that mean anything, sister? You would know. Did they embalm him in time? Maybe he walks the halls of the other world now, or maybe he wanders out here, as a ghost. Can ghosts come into dreams, Ishizu? _

_I wish I knew where we were. We could be ten miles from the Pharaoh's city, or a thousand for all I know. I have a feeling it's far, but I could just as well be wrong._

Malik ducked his head beneath the water and reemerged, up to his eyes. If he stood on his toes and put his arms out to the side, he could feel weightless. He imagined what it might be like to drown. It was something he'd never thought about before. It couldn't be such a bad way to die - it wasn't like being burned alive or impaled on a stake. He knew the punishment that awaited him back in the city. It would only take a moment to chop his head off, and it probably wouldn't even have to time to hurt – but he didn't want to end life in two parts. If it was drowning, he decided, he wouldn't mind as much. It would be like being born, except backwards.

_There's nothing out here except for the sand and the sky, Ishizu, and sometimes it makes you feel like the smallest thing in the world. But at the same time, you feel like you're expanding in order to take up all that empty space. Do you have any idea what I mean, sister? Everything here is like that here, you know. It looks one way, and then it turns out to be the opposite of what you thought. The men here are like that. You look at them and see one face, and at the very same time there are many other faces they do not show you. When someone tells me something I'm not sure whether to believe it's the truth or not. I start to wonder if I'm telling the truth myself._

If he inhaled, he found, he could float face-down in the pool. The water didn't sting his eyes when he opened them. He held his breath, looking down, wondering if he could remain floating long enough for the sandy clouds to settle where his feet disturbed the bottom. It would be as if he'd never been there at all.

Around the floating shadow of his form, the water was shot through with the sun's rays. But even as he watched, unblinking, he found his thoughts following the source of the water instead, an underground current stemming from some cold, lonely spring deep beneath the mountains. When he surfaced from the water again, the sky beyond the waving fronds of the date-palms was an empty, oblivious blue.

Malik was certainly no stranger to loneliness, but it had never been this harsh. The cares of the day so far had acted as a temporary distraction for this weird, shining desolation. It waited to catch him, unaware, when he was by himself – and had come swooping down on him so suddenly his mind reeled. _Am I really so defenseless? _he wondered. Maybe it was because he was alone. Maybe it was because of who he was with – but no, there was nobody else here, not now. Maybe his surrounding were simply having a strange effect on him. There was an eerie elegance to the wilderness around him; it was clean as bone and, apart from the faint wind and the whisper of the palm fronds above, it was dead silent. He tried to remember where the stars had been last night. Did they appear with the departure of Ra and vanish, frightened, when He came? Or were they there the whole time, hiding behind the light? Perhaps the day was nothing more than a veil for the darkness, like a layer of makeup on a woman's face. He could hear the buzzing of flies somewhere nearby – it seemed to come and go. Every time he looked, though, there was nothing there. It was becoming harder to tell what was real. If he passed his hand in front of his eyes, it seemed to leave a thin trail of light behind it in the air.

His wandering eyes fell on a dark shape approaching from the top of another rocky abutment, and with a jolt, he snapped out of his trance. It was a man on a horse - the sun was behind him, and his form was dark against the light. Malik couldn't see much at first, and his heart began to beat faster in alarm. But then the man drew closer, approaching in his direction, and he was just able to make out the red cloak. Akefia was back. He'd been expecting him to be gone for days, but it had only been a few hours. Malik's relief was short-lived, however – he remembered his tunic was on the shore and grabbed it hastily, pulling it over himself in a rush. _Nice going, Malik,_ he thought, _now it's all wet again. Should I leave the water or not?_ He felt awkward all of a sudden – more so than usual, anyway. _I think not. _

Akefia called out a greeting from afar, and Malik waved to him. Although Akefia was very far indeed from being what Malik would deem a reassuring presence, he was still oddly grateful that he'd showed up. The sand and the sky and even his own self had seemed, for a brief while, to become like a thin layer of glass. Something else had been pushing against it, starting a slow fracture. But then Akefia came, and suddenly it all seemed very normal again, like confused colors that jumped into place again once you focused your eyes.

"I know the Pharaoh's subjects have a lot of peculiar habits," the Thief King said as he drew closer, "but I was not aware they bathed fully clothed." A bow was slung across Akefia's chest, and a quiver of arrows was at his back. He scrutinized Malik with a roguish smile. "Isn't that a little inhibiting?"

"I saw you coming," Malik said, feeling a little defeated.

Akefia was looking at him curiously, a suppressed half-smile playing around his eyes.

Malik frowned and folded his arms a bit uncomfortably. "What is it?"

"…I'm guessing this is your first time living with other men."

"Why?"

The thief leaned forward. "You _look_ like a drowned rat," he said conspiratorially, "but you act like a shy maiden."

Malik bridled at this. "That's not true," he disagreed. "I just have a sense of decorum."

"Fancy words, princess."

Malik really hoped this wasn't going to be his new nickname. He decided to change the subject. "I hope you had a pleasant trip."

"So formal, aren't you?" The Thief King smiled; Malik noticed he didn't say anything about where he'd been. "Come here."

Malik peered at Akefia and put a hand over his forehead to shield his eyes from the sun. "Why?"

"You're going to come with me, and I'm going to teach you how to shoot."

"Oh. …Why?"

A furrow appeared on Akefia's brow. "So that someday you'll be able to shoot people who are trying to kill you," he said slowly, "and other things like that. Archery has any number of practical applications."

"Ah. You know, I never really counted on having to shoot people," Malik confessed hesitantly. "Ever, in fact."

"You'll be glad you learned. Only way to get things done, really." He clicked his tongue impatiently and made a hurry-up-get-over-here gesture.

"Well, it's very nice of you," Malik said, stepping out of the water.

"I happen to have some free time, and you could be doing something useful besides splashing around looking pretty," said the Thief King offhandedly. "And thank you; it's been a while since anyone called me nice, although I'm not sure how true it is seeing as how teaching you self-defense benefits me just as much as it does you."

Again, he had a point. The sand was sticking to Malik's feet, which had left dark prints from the edge of the water. Wringing the sleeves of his tunic, he approached the Thief King. He hadn't remembered quite how big his horse was. It was a beautiful beast – its coat was a glossy black, obviously well-cared for, and it was lean and strong, built for running fast. Its sentient, intelligent eyes followed him as he got closer to it, the whites just barely visible at the edges. It occurred to Malik that it seemed almost to inhabit the moods of its owner – that night in the desert, when he'd first laid eyes on the man, this horse had been pawing the ground, a harbinger of destruction, pacing back and forth as if it were angry at having to stand still. Now, however, it was calm and relaxed – regarding him coolly, the way the Thief King himself was doing now.

Akefia extended a hand to Malik, to help him onto its back. Malik hesitated. The hem of his tunic was still dripping onto the sand.

"I'll get you all wet," he said.

The Thief King shrugged. "I think I'll live."

Malik appeared to consider this, consented with a shrug, and let himself be pulled up onto the front of the horse. Akefia wondered briefly if he realized how deliciously the wet tunic was clinging to him. He probably didn't, the poor naïve. "I'm sorry," he was saying ruefully, as he settled in front of Akefia. "I'm dripping everywhere."

Akefia was riding without a saddle, so he put an arm around Malik's waist to keep him steady as the horse began to walk. "Not to worry," he said, with a smile Malik couldn't see. "It suits you."

"Oh, thank you," Malik said blandly, trying not to sound like he was blushing, and he could feel the Thief King laugh softly against his back. He didn't say anything else, though.

The stallion carried them over the foothills to slightly higher land, where they reached an expanse of rocks that covered a terrain of sand. There was a dead acacia tree at the other end, gnarly-branched and twisted, which looked as if it had been there for a long time. It was little more than a stump at this point; a hollow in the center of the bleached wood would have once been a perfect spot to keep bees, if they had been in a place with flowers.

Akefia dismounted about a hundred feet away from the tree and Malik followed him, leaping from the stallion's side to the ground. The front of the thief's robe was wet, he noticed guiltily, but the man didn't seem to mind; he just slipped it off and threw it across the back of his horse. The water had soaked all the way to his skin, though, gleaming off his chest when he moved. It was a bit distracting for some reason. Malik surreptitiously shifted his gaze to the tree.

"So," Akefia was saying, "do you know anything at all about shooting?" Malik confessed that he did not; anything he might have once known he'd certainly forgotten in recent years. Akefia thankfully didn't make any remarks on that end; he simply told Malik to watch and then drew an arrow to demonstrate. He pulled back the sinew bowstring with his right arm and, holding the bow level with his other, he leaned back and took aim. Tilting his head to the side, he let the arrow fly – straight and true into the very center of the dead tree.

_Well, that looks easy._

Malik filled his cheeks with air and disconsolately puffed it out. _Oh, who am I kidding? I'll never be able to do that._ He was good at studying, and writing, and reading, and healing, and waking up thieves, and mucking about with treasure, but if it involved coordination or strength, he could count on himself to fail.

"Your turn," said Akefia brightly. He offered him the bow, and with a feeling of impending doom, Malik took it. It was on the heavy side, and when the bowstring wasn't pulled back it was roughly the height of his shoulder.

"You've got a pretty tall bow here, huh?" Malik said apprehensively.

"That's _your_ bow," he replied. "Mine's a bit taller than you are, I'm afraid."

So much for that. Wait, _his_ bow? For him? Malik looked down at it wonderingly. It was a present, then. Where had Akefia gotten it from? Was it stolen or had he made it? It was fashioned of two conjoined black horns, ridged and curved backwards. The horns were longer than those of the local gazelles; he wondered what animal had yielded them. It was a well-made bow; very generous indeed.

Akefia looked at how he was holding it. "You're left-handed, are you?" he asked; Malik nodded.

"All right then, just do everything opposite." Malik raised the bow in his right hand and pulled back the bowstring; Akefia gave him a critical once-over, stepped behind him and thumped his stomach. "Back straight."

Malik straightened up. He felt a hand come under his elbow, lifting it gently so his arm was level with his jaw. Malik tried to draw the string back farther, the way he'd seen Akefia do it and found to his delight that it was easier with his arm up. He wasn't strong enough to pull it all the way back, though. "It'll come with time," Akefia reassured him, and pulled him by the shoulders so he was leaning backwards slightly, so he wouldn't fall over when he shot the arrow.

Akefia went on to explain how tilting one's head when aiming made it easier to judge the height of the target. Malik had seen soldiers in the city doing archery practice near the barracks on several occasions, and they always looked straight ahead, backs rigid and straight, as if they were posing for a painting. However, he felt more inclined to trust the Thief King's method. He closed one eye and tried to level the arrow towards the center of the tree.

"Relax, you're too stiff," said the Thief King, softly. "Now. Want to know what you're doing wrong?"

Malik felt warm, capable hands covering his, guiding them into the right position. "You're watching the arrow," Akefia continued pointedly, "when what you should be doing is watching the tree. Don't get distracted by what's right in front of you…" He brushed Malik's hair out of the way and leaned in, next to his ear. "Or what's right behind you, for that matter. Your eyes should always be on your goal."

Akefia was so close, Malik could feel the gust of his breath on the side of his neck. He kept still, resisting the urge to look around, and stared at the tree defiantly. If the stare had been slightly more intense, the tree might have run the risk of bursting into flames on the spot.

"Keep what you want in sight, and you'll get it," the Thief King went on. "In the end, it's all about your ability to concentrate. What if you're in the middle of battle? You need to be able to keep your mind free of distractions."

Despite the distraction at hand (which, looking back, Malik realized had probably been intentional), he made a heroic effort to disregard it. His thoughts yowled in protest, but he managed to shove them to the back of his head.

"And remember to breathe," Akefia whispered.

Malik took a long breath in and out.

"Are you looking?"

He nodded.

"Have at it."

Malik let go of the bowstring and it snapped back; the bow tugged forward from the impact and the arrow flew in a gentle arch – coming to rest embedded in the upper part of the tree.

Akefia gave him a hearty clap on the back. "Not bad," he said, sounding pleased. "Not bad at all for your first time. Think you can remember what I told you?"

The Thief King sounded almost proud, and despite the fact that Malik knew he could have done better, he couldn't help but feel rewarded. "I'll try," he said. And then he smiled.

It was that same smile he had seen the night before, Akefia realized, the one it had been so hard to look away from. The boy's face, which usually wore a rather watchful, withdrawn expression, was suddenly transformed. He smiled sometimes to be polite – and he was always so bloody _formal_, too – but this was something different. This smile was pure as a raindrop, bright as a beacon through fog. Akefia knew the boy wasn't happy – wouldn't be for a long time, probably, and who could blame him, in a world like this? But for a brief second, he could see what Malik would look like if the world were perfect. But then Malik seemed to grow shy again, and the smile vanished as suddenly as if a veil had come down over his face. _Do that again_, Akefia felt like saying. But of course he didn't. Nobody could smile like that on command, not even for the King of Thieves.

Instead, he unstrung the quiver from his own back and slung it over Malik's. "Right answer. Now just shoot all the arrows here, gather 'em up and do it again. Then come find me."

Malik looked over his shoulder at the quiver. It held thirty or thirty-five slender arrows easily; to shoot them all twice would take him a while. And his arms were already beginning to tire from the weight of the bow. "Consider it done," he said bravely.

Akefia flashed him a grin and mounted his steed - grasping the mane and leaping up onto its back. The stallion paced slightly, swishing its tail. "I'd leave you my horse," he said, looking down at Malik, "but I don't think you'd be able to ride him. Can you remember how to get back?"

Malik nodded and the Thief King seemed satisfied; he dug in his heels, and rider and horse disappeared in the direction of the cave.

As he rode away, Akefia found himself compiling a mental list of things that seemed to make Malik happy. Tunics were one, it seemed. Approval was another. Beer might be a third. How uncomplicated the boy seemed in retrospect! It was hard to believe he'd ever been suspicious of him, for he was transparent to a fault – all his thoughts or feelings might as well have been written on his face. If a regular man's eyes were a window into his soul, Malik's were like wide-open doorways.

But last night, he couldn't deny he'd seen some other side of Malik, one he couldn't so easily understand. It was an alien factor, therefore potentially hazardous, especially since there was a lot about Malik he didn't yet know, and until Akefia had him completely figured out, he had to be careful. Other men would have dismissed the uneasy feeling from last night as the figment of an exhausted imagination, but Akefia hadn't gotten to be the King of Thieves by ignoring his instincts. His instincts said to keep his distance, and yet, Akefia had felt himself utterly entranced by that smile. It had taken him completely off guard, like a bludgeon to the side of the head, and he didn't like it at all.

There were few things the Thief King suffered that he couldn't control. His desire for revenge was one, but it had served him well. He had poured all his hatred and all his love, even his very soul into the furnace of that desire, and in turn it fueled the flames and the billows of smoke that would consume whoever tried to stand in his way. The desires of the flesh held sway over him too, sometimes very strongly. But in his youth, he had realized it could prove dangerous if he let those desires have dominion over him, instead of the other way around, and so he had hardened his control systematically, the way a jeweler cuts facets into a gemstone. This was also why, although the Thief King drank a considerable amount, he never got to the point where his logic was compromised. By nature, he was one of those men who walked the thin line where reason gave way to chaos. To keep his footing was all-important, for his reason was what determined where he would ultimately succeed or fail. This didn't mean he didn't avail himself of loose women and other conveniences when the urge struck him – he was a hot-blooded man of considerable appetites, and since he could get practically any woman he wanted, there wasn't much to prevent him satisfying his hunger. But never did he want someone too much, beyond what was rational. At the end of the day, he could take them or leave them. As ironic as it seemed, it was by keeping his passions in check that he was able to obtain and keep the things he truly desired. A thief of meager ambition or talent might have given into any temptation that came his way and lost nothing. But, the way Akefia saw it, a great thief was like a knife – his mind had to be razor-sharp, like the cutting edge, and his body had to be strong, like the tempered metal of the blade. But the handle of the knife was his will, his resolve, his reason – it must be sturdier than city walls, and more unbreakable than a solemn vow. For with a weak base, the best-wrought blade in the world might prove useless in the moment of truth.

That smile ran a risk of turning problematic, he realized, and so did Malik. He would have to watch out for both in the future.

Meanwhile, Malik had turned back to the dead tree. He tried to do everything Akefia had told him, defying the urge to watch the arrow he was aiming and training his eyes instead on the tree skeleton, but even so, the second arrow he shot was way off-target. The third was only slightly less far afield. He'd managed to hit the tree once, though, and he could do it again. Akefia had been _trying_ to distract him, god damn it, and he'd been close to succeeding too. But the fact of the matter was, now that he was gone, it was actually becoming harder to concentrate for some reason. Malik was alone again, and he became aware of his mind resisting him, wanting to spiral away again onto odd tracks. _Back straight. Relax. Remember to breathe._ Malik drew another arrow from the quiver, and tried to imagine Akefia's hands on his, helping him shoot true.

ʘ

By the time Malik returned to the cave, the sun had just slipped below the horizon. There was still some violet light left in the western sky, but it was rapidly being taken over by the deep indigo blue of night. The thieves had already lit a fire; he could see its glow flickering on the rock walls as he approached the entrance, and the occasional outburst of raucous laughter was audible even from a distance.

True to his expectations, it had taken him a long time to shoot all the arrows, but it had paid off – even though he still couldn't hit the cavity in the center of the tree, the arrows he was shooting by the end didn't tend to be more than a foot off-target. Malik considered this pretty good progress. Of course, he was exhausted, and his arms felt like they were about to fall off, but it was worth it. Also, he'd managed not to get lost on his trek back. Things were definitely looking up.

The thieves looked up from where they were sitting around the fire and called out various greetings as he drew closer – "Hey, look who made it back in one piece!" "Long time no see, buddy!" "We gave you up for lost!" "How are the scorpions tonight, Malik?"

Malik just smiled; everyone was in a good mood, even Nefermaat, who appeared to have forgotten his previous threat. Even Mekhu proved more sociable than he'd been the previous night, although he periodically jumped back and forth between his companions and whatever he was writing on his papyrus. The Thief King tossed him an onion, which he caught. "How's your aim, Majesty?"

"Getting there."

"Nice bow," Nefermaat commented. "I'm surprised a pipsqueak like you can wield it."

Was he going to get irritated that he'd just been called a pipsqueak? No, Malik decided. He was not going to get irritated. It was much too nice a night for that. He decided to take it as a compliment. Akefia motioned for him to sit down beside him, which he did, stashing the bow and arrow beneath the bench. He bit into the onion. It wasn't bad. It wasn't really that good either, but what else could you expect from an onion at the end of the day?

Now that he was closer to the fire, everything outside seemed to have gotten darker by comparision. Outside the archway, the multitude of stars were beginning to come out one by one in the twilight. The thieves returned to whatever they had been discussing before his arrival. They appeared to be having a friendly dispute of some kind.

"Look," Zaza was saying on Malik's other side, "I hate to make generalizations. But a few of them are hard to deal with. I don't like being asked questions all the time."

Nefermaat agreed wholeheartedly. "Not only that," he complained, lip curling in disdain, "but they've got nothing going on upstairs. All they ever seem to think about is how they look. If you give them the chance, they'll spend bloody hours talking about jewelry."

"Look who's talking," Mekhu muttered without looking up from his papyrus.

"Wanna get hurt?"

Mekhu ignored him loftily, looking somewhat put-upon. Then again, he seemed to look disgruntled whenever Malik saw him. It occurred to him that maybe Mekhu's face was just like that naturally.

He noticed that Akefia was being unnaturally quiet. He was making good progress on a bottle, watching the argument with an unreadable expression on his face. He might very well have been following the proceedings seriously, and then again, he might have been laughing to himself the whole time at everything and everyone else. Malik would have given a good deal to be able to tell what he was thinking. He didn't seem to be entirely present, however; his gaze kept wandering to the cave entrance, as if he were expecting something to happen. Or maybe, it occurred to Malik, he was considering leaving again that night. Or maybe, like himself, Akefia was just watching the stars coming out.

On Akefia's other side, Aminadav was waxing poetic. "Women are like flowers," he said passionately. "They're delicate. You've got to treat them carefully."

Ah, _women_. So that's what they were arguing about. Vaguely, Malik wondered what could have inspired the discussion. There were probably no women to be found for miles.

"They're like flowers, sure," Nefermaat conceded, with a snigger. "Short-lived, and largely useless except for one thing."

"I never went _that_ far," Zaza said with a frown.

"Forgive Nefermaat," Teti-En mumbled from somewhere behind a cloud of blue smoke. "He doesn't know what he's talking about."

The Nubian glared at him. "Say that a little louder."

"But they're all soft and pretty and they smell good," Kawab countered, looking somewhat at a loss. "How can you turn up your nose at that?"

"Fine qualities, to be sure," Akefia said measuredly, finally contributing to the discussion. "But all I said before you lot started bickering was - I don't see what the big fuss is about. After you've had one woman, you've pretty much had them all." His gray eyes flickered over to Malik, and he smiled. "Am I right, Majesty?"

"I'm not really the person to ask," Malik said around a mouthful of onion, and immediately regretted it as he realized how it sounded. "I mean…"

Siamun snickered. Nefermaat nudged Mekhu in the ribs. And Kawab just looked confused. Akefia raised an eyebrow.

"Ah, so perhaps our little guest has found occupations other than females," he said slyly, relishing Malik's obvious discomfort. "Or should I say, is occupied _by_ - "

"That is _not_ what I meant!" Malik was quick to protest, thankfully before Akefia could finish his thought. "Females _are _my occupation. I mean, not really, but they would be, if…" There was no graceful way to finish that sentence, so he gave up.

Teti-En went into a brief coughing fit; some smoke must have gone down the wrong way.

"Is that so?" Akefia still had that knowing smirk. "Isn't that interesting. I would have thought the palace girls would be all over you."

Malik didn't think he had ever been this embarrassed before in his life. He covered his eyes and shook his head. "They're into guys like him," he replied, waving an arm in Kawab's general direction. It was true; the women seemed to like muscles and although it killed him to admit it, Malik had simply not been blessed in that respect. Girls didn't tend to seek out his companionship for any purpose other than friendship (although to be fair, Malik didn't really seek out their companionship either).

"He's right, you know," he heard Kawab say, sounding pleased.

"Yes," Aminadav replied patiently, "we know."

"What a shocking exposé," Akefia drawled, sounding anything but scandalized. "It seems I shall be forced to conclude that our dear guest has never had the pleasure of feminine company. We'll have to fix that right quick, don't you think?"

"On the double!" Kawab cried earnestly, hoisting a bottle aloft (six more bottles followed his, along with a chorus of affirmative shouts).

"_No_," said Malik hurriedly, wishing to Ra the conversation would end. "I mean, no thank you. That's fine, really." Kawab shot him a look that was genuinely perplexed. Akefia, however, just sized him up.

"You're sure? It wouldn't be any trouble, I can assure you."

"I'm sure," Malik said, gratefully.

"So perhaps, after all," the Thief King mused, "it's not _feminine_ company you - "

The fire pit was starting to look kind of appealing. Malik sat forward, buried his face in his arms, but instead of heaving the piteous moan he felt was entirely warranted by the situation, he just said, in a small voice that was very distinct if a bit muffled: "I would like to conclude this discussion now, please."

There was a brief moment of stunned silence, and then everyone started to laugh.

"Of course. Consider the topic closed." Akefia gave his hair a benevolent ruffle. "He's got a sense of _decorum_, wouldn't you know," he said by way of explanation to the thieves.

"Imagine that," Zaza exclaimed, sounding impressed.

"I've _heard_ of those," said Teti-En obscurely. Malik could not for the life of him tell whether he was joking or not.

"I wonder where you would go about finding one," Kawab wondered aloud.

"From time to time," Nefermaat said, a little wistfully, "I wish I had one myself,"

"Well,_ that's_ the biggest lie I've ever heard," said Mekhu bluntly.

"What about that time your mother said she wasn't a whore? Because that was a pretty big lie too."

Zaza wrinkled his nose. "You can come up with better jokes than that."

"Oh, that wasn't a joke. Mekhu, tell him."

"I can feel myself growing stupider," said Mekhu coldly, "the longer I listen to you talk. Do you think there might be a connection?"

"Must be the old age kicking in. It must be awfully depressing to be you."

"I refuse to engage in this conversation any longer."

Nefermaat made some half-baked accusation that Mekhu's parents had been siblings, and after that the two started trading insults in earnest - Zaza and Kawab provided occasional input and appeared to be keeping a score of some kind. Meanwhile, Akefia had started talking to Aminadav about something else entirely, and Teti-En was having an intense, if one-sided conversation with Siamun; as far as Malik could tell, his embarrassing interrogation had been all but forgotten already. He made the resolute decision to forget about it as well.

Except he didn't.

It was a little troublesome, actually. He'd never given much thought to the fact that he didn't generally find himself attracted to women – he'd just always assumed it was something that would happen with time. Akefia seemed to think there was another viable option, which had set Malik's mind to its usual worrying. Maybe it was customary for the commoners to talk of such things, but in the palace such a practice was an utmost taboo. It wasn't like he didn't hear gossip flying around about so-and-so who was rumored to be doing such-and-such – but it wasn't the kind of thing that could be openly discussed. Which Malik, admittedly, found confusing from time to time (especially seeing as how he'd come across stories about it in his scriptures – but they didn't seem to be the stories that people cared to explain an awful lot). Anyway, it wasn't something he was in the habit of thinking about. And that was how things were supposed to be.

Probably.

Malik decided to have some beer.

ʘ

He was willing to bet that the thieves drank every night. It certainly seemed that way. Wine, it seemed, was something reserved for special occasions (such as a raid), but tonight everybody was hitting the beer pretty hard. As the night wore on and the sky deepened to an inky black, the thieves got progressively louder and more rambunctious. Malik himself was enjoying the happy feeling for the third time that day. Life with the thieves, it seemed, was evenly divided into two parts – during daylight hours, they were all more or less serious – doing what needed to be done and working hard. But as soon as the sun went down, it turned into a celebration – regardless, apparently, of whether there was anything to celebrate or not.

"It's time for a story!" Kawab declared, and was met with an enthusiastic roar of assent.

"A story!"

"Right on!"

"Whose turn is it?"

"Hey Teti-En! Tell a story!"

"Wait," said Zazamoukh, trying to quiet everyone down. "Siamun told a story last time, and before _that_ was Teti-En…"

"I don't want it to be Mekhu's turn," someone said candidly. "His stories always put me to sleep."

"I beg your pardon," Mekhu retorted, although at this point he sounded more exhausted than grouchy.

Eventually, after much consultation, the thieves decided that it was Akefia's turn to tell a story. The Thief King didn't protest, but told everyone to quiet down while he thought of a good one. The thieves used this golden opportunity to pour themselves more beer. Zaza threw a few more lengths of dry wood on the fire, which quickly blazed up.

"I've got it," Akefia declared at length. The hubbub of chatter around the fire diminished into silence. "Now, prepare to hear a tale of hazardous undertakings and bloody vengeance. This was a story told to me a long time ago, by an old man who is probably dead by now. Remember it well; every word is true."

_Once, long ago, before songs had words and before rivers flowed to the sea, there lived two brothers,_ the Thief King began. _The younger brother was much the handsomer and cleverer of the two, and naturally everyone loved him. As time went on, the older brother got more and more jealous, until finally he came up with a plan that would rid him of his troublesome younger brother forever._

Everything around the fire seemed to have gotten a bit darker, so now all the men were isolated in a ring of light, like an island separated from the sea of shadow all around them. The Thief King's voice was low and unhurried and spellbinding, sweet as narcotic honey. The rings on his hands gleamed darkly in the firelight.

_The older brother lured the other out to the desert one day. Once they were a reasonable distance from civilization, he overpowered the younger brother and tied him to a boulder with a length of rope, leaving him there to die. _

_Lo and behold; before much time had passed, along came a camel trader with his caravan – a wizened old man, bent almost double, who had been traveling the deserts all his life. He stopped when he saw the young man._

'_Greetings!' he said. 'Why are you tied to that boulder?'_

'_Funny you should ask that, my friend,' replied the resourceful younger brother. 'You see, my back used to be most awfully crooked – but this is the perfect cure! Since I've been tied to this rock, all my ailments have vanished! But it all depends on the knots."_

'_How I wish someone who knew the correct knots would help me!' moaned the old camel trader. 'My back has been plaguing me all my life!'_

'_If you'd be so kind as to untie me,' said the young man, 'I'll have you properly knotted up in a jiffy.'_

_So the old man freed the young one. As soon as the camel trader was tied helpless to the rock, however, the younger brother bade him a fond farewell and made off with his entire caravan of camels. He traveled up and down the Nile, stealing a goat here, a herd of oxen there. Before long, he was renowned throughout the land as a master thief._

The story was affecting Malik more than it usually would have; he attributed this to the beer. "Why did he have to trick the camel trader?" he found himself asking forlornly. "He could have just untied him."

"You'd be surprised actually," Akefia replied, "how many people will just leave you to die."

Startled, Malik looked up. The Thief King's grey eyes met his; they looked a little darker than they usually did. There was a glimmer in there somewhere – he couldn't tell if it was amusement, or just a reflection of the leaping flames.

"Don't trust anyone," he said.

"Especially not camel traders," Teti-En chimed in, out of the blue.

"_Especially_ not camel traders," Akefia agreed emphatically. "Now where was I?"

_Time plodded on in its grim cycle, and for a while he managed to evade capture, but in the end his luck ran out as luck will; he was caught and brought before the Pharaoh of Egypt._

'_See here, thief,' the Pharaoh said, pointing to his law book. 'According to the rules, I ought to have you executed. But I've decided to give you a chance. If you can bring me the flying horse which belongs to the mighty Sphinx, I will set you free.' You see, the Pharaoh was the sort of man who wasn't content to simply dispense justice. He liked to toy with people, and he thought he'd set an impossible task before the thief – one he would surely die trying to attempt._

'_That's nothing!' cried the thief unexpectedly. 'I'll have it done before you can say Banephthysdjedet!"_

_That night, he snuck up to the Sphinx's stables. He could see where the beautiful flying horse was tethered, but as soon as he drew closer to try to steal it, it neighed loudly, awakening the Sphinx._

'_Who's there?' he thundered, sensing an intruder. But the thief had hidden so well that - "_

"Hang on," Kawab interrupted. "You mean to tell me the Sphinx is male?"

"But of course," Akefia replied.

"I've only ever heard of lady Sphinxes."

"Well, obviously there must be male Sphinxes too," Akefia replied patiently, "to help make the little baby Sphinxes. Consider your world expanded. Now shut up and let me tell the story."

_The thief had hidden so well that the Sphinx could not find him, so away he went back to bed. When the thief tried to approach the horse again, however, it neighed once more. Again, the Sphinx came downstairs, but when he still couldn't find any sign of a trespasser, he dealt the horse a mighty blow on the head, angry that it had awakened him. When the thief drew closer for the third time, the horse had grown bitter at being mistreated, and decided not to alert its owner to the fact it was being stolen. The thief took it by the bridle and led it outside, but not a sound did it make. He leapt onto the creature's back, and flew away into the night._

_The next morning, he showed up at the Pharaoh's palace with the flying horse in tow. _

'_Hello there, Pharaoh,' he said cheerfully, in high spirits. 'I've done as you asked. It's time for you to set me free!'_

_The Pharaoh had not been expecting him to succeed, and he was very impressed. Naturally, though, he was too much of an asshole to show it, and only said:_

'_Any old bum could have stolen the flying horse; that's not much of a challenge. But unless you can bring me the bed-spread that belongs to the Sphinx by tomorrow morning, I'll have you chopped up into a thousand pieces!'_

A shiver went down Malik's spine at the thought. Every so often, it seemed, he would even forget that Akefia was telling a story, so masterfully did he recount it.

"Why would he want the bed-spread of all things?" Mekhu was asking with a frown.

"No reason; it was just absurdly hard to steal."

"That son of a bitch," Nefermaat muttered darkly. "If I were the thief in the story, I would have just told him to go fuck himself."

"That would have made for a very quick ending to the story," said the Thief King with a smirk, "which is why you're not in it."

"Yeah, yeah," Nefermaat said. "Come on, keep going, what happens next?"

All the thieves' eyes were on Akefia as he resumed the tale, waiting to hear how the story of the unlucky thief played out. The fire crackled as the Thief King spoke, punctuating his well-timed pauses.

_Now, here he is, in the Pharaoh's palace, defenseless and surrounded by guards. Our hero doesn't have much of a choice, does he? 'Why, that's nothing!' he cried, even though he was secretly outraged that the Pharaoh had broken his promise. _

_That night, he journeyed to the Sphinx's house, and quietly climbed up onto his roof while he was asleep. Ever-so-carefully, he sawed a hole in the roof right over the chamber where the Sphinx lay in bed next to his wife. He lowered a chain with a hook on the end through the hole, with which he began to haul up the bed-spread._

_But what do you know; the Sphinx was no fool. There were little bells sewn all over the bed-spread, which rang and straightaway the Sphinx woke up, crying, 'Wife, you have pulled off all the bed-clothes!' He yanked them back, and of course, the clever thief fell head first onto the bed._

'_Aha!' exclaimed the Sphinx when he saw the man. 'So that's where my flying horse went!' He promptly tied the thief up with the chain and threw him into the pantry._

_The next day, the Sphinx made ready to leave for the bazaar, where he usually went to trade. He turned over a huge profit because of his exorbitant prices; after all, nobody wants to haggle with a Sphinx. Before he left, he said to his wife, 'I'm leaving for the day. You must stay at home – I'll be back by sundown, and I want you to roast that thief for my dinner!'_

_Sundown came, but when the Sphinx returned home, what should he find but the pantry empty and his wife roasting in the oven instead._

"Wait," said Kawab, a frown on his brow. "I just thought of something."

Akefia sighed. "Yes, what is it?"

"Is the Sphinx's wife a human or another Sphinx?"

"I believe she was a Sphinx. I also fail to see how this is important."

"Because, I was just thinking," Kawab continued, oblivious, "that if a lion had sex with a human, the baby would be a Sphinx. But what if a Sphinx had sex with a human?" He raised his eyebrows and spread his hands wide, as if to indicate that this was a mystery for the ages.

Teti-En blew out a puff of smoke. "The baby would be a lion," he reasoned.

"No way," Zaza argued. "It would be, like, a half-Sphinx."

"I have an idea," said the Thief King brightly. "Why don't we send you to go find out?"

Kawab looked distinctly horrified at this prospect. "I don't think so."

"Are you sure? Because I'd love to find out."

"I'm pretty sure."

"Do you feel like being quiet now?"

"Maybe."

_The Pharaoh could not believe his eyes, _Akefia continued_, when he saw that the thief had succeeded once again. But if he kept up his end of the bargain, it would mean he had been defeated – nobody was supposed to be skillful enough to steal the Sphinx's bed-spread! He decided to assign the man a task that was sure to be impossible._

'_You have stolen the bed-spread,' the Pharaoh acceded. 'But I am afraid that is not enough. To prove yourself worthy of my mercy, you must bring me the Sphinx himself.'_

_At these words, the thief felt a nagging twinge of doubt. Always before he had completely trusted in his own abilities, but this was a tall order to fill. Nevertheless, he managed to smile and told the Pharaoh, 'No problem!'_

_He racked his brains for hours and hours, pacing through the streets. Eventually he found himself at the outermost boundaries of the city, and there he saw the Sphinx from a distance, busy doing something in front of his house. And like a bolt from the heavens, an idea came to him._

_He disguised himself as an old man, dressing himself in rags from head to toe. Hobbling on a cane, with a slow, ponderous gait, he approached the house where the Sphinx was toiling, busy building a box._

'_Good evening, your worship,' said the thief, in a voice as dry and whispery as dead leaves. 'Might you be able to spare some bread for a poor old man?'_

_The Sphinx didn't like being disturbed. 'I'll see when I've finished building my box,' he snapped._

'_I'll wait,' said the thief. He took a seat on an old olive stump. 'What is the box for?'_

'_I'm making it to bury a thief in,' the Sphinx gloated. 'Not only did he cook my wife, he stole my bed-spread and my flying horse too!'_

_No doubt about it, the thief was frightened. 'He certainly deserves such a fate,' he croaked, disguising his voice as best he could. 'But he's much too big to fit in that box!'_

_The Sphinx scoffed. 'What are you talking about?' he said. 'This box is big enough to hold even me!'_

'_Hmph,' the thief snorted. 'I don't believe you.'_

'_I'll show you, then!' growled the Sphinx – and he leapt inside the box, curling himself up to fit._

_As soon as he was safely inside, the thief grabbed the lid quick as a flash and locked him in. The Sphinx kicked and howled, but to no avail; he had built the box so sturdily for his enemy that he himself now had no chance of getting out._

Akefia smiled and leaned forward, eyes traveling from one listener to the next. Malik wondered how many stories he knew.

_The thief once again went before the Pharaoh. 'Your Majesty,' he exclaimed, exhausted – 'I have brought you the Sphinx! Threefold, I have kept my end of the bargain! Are you going to let me free now?'_

_The Pharaoh turned a skeptical eye to the box. 'I don't believe you!' he cried. 'There's no Sphinx in that box!'_

'_Do you want to see him?' asked the thief craftily._

'_Show me him – if you can!' The Pharaoh scoffed. 'Such a thing is beyond impossible!'_

_The thief opened the lid just far enough – the Sphinx put out his head and devoured the Pharaoh in a single gulp! Instantly, the thief locked the lid back on again tight, nailed it down, and sealed up the Sphinx for all eternity. The princess saw her father die, and was immediately so overtaken with joy that she proposed to the young man on the spot. He decided he wouldn't half mind living in the palace, so he accepted and they were married the very same day. He ascended to the throne and began to live a life of uninterrupted indolence. It was fun for exactly two years, and then he got bored, so he abandoned the princess and journeyed off somewhere – and where he is now, nobody knows._

"And there the story ends."

There was an immediate cacophony of appreciative whistles and clapping from around the fire. Akefia bowed his head theatrically and took another long drink.

"I _knew_ it," Nefermaat exclaimed, with a broad grin of satisfaction. "Fucking Pharaoh got what he deserved."

"What happened to the Sphinx?" Malik wanted to know. "Did he die?"

"Not at all," Akefia told him. "Sphinxes live forever, didn't you know?"

"What happened to the box?" he asked, eyes wide.

"He threw it to the bottom of the ocean, so no-one would ever have a chance of setting the monster free."

"Sphinxes can't breathe water," Kawab harrumphed.

"How would you know?" Mekhu demanded.

Another argument seemed on the verge of breaking out, but before it could escalate, Akefia interrupted. "You're all taking this too seriously," he said with a half-smile. "It's just a story."

"I thought it was true," Malik said, feeling a little confused.

"That it is," Akefia replied expansively. "But it's also just a story. Know what I mean?"

ʘ

Ishizu sobbed in her sleep and woke herself up. She found herself in her own, familiar room. Through the window, outside, she could see the stars were in their right place. The floors were clear of sand. She wiped a solitary tear she didn't remember crying from her face. She must have shed it while she was dreaming.

Ishizu felt as if all her innards had been taken out and left for rats to feed on – then someone had put them back, half-gnawed, in the wrong order. She sat on the edge of her bed and held her head until the feeling passed. She was to meet with Atemu tomorrow; perhaps she was simply nervous. Maybe she'd been in her chambers too long; the walls were beginning to feel like they were moving in. Or maybe she'd eaten something she shouldn't have. But even as these thoughts occurred to her, she knew they weren't what had caused the dream.

This dream had not been sent from the Gods, of that she was certain. It left her feeling sick and alone, and for once in her life, she could not begin to guess what it meant. Although she was afraid – indeed, very afraid – she closed her eyes and tried to remember.

_Ishizu was on a journey, riding a night-black horse as swiftly as the wind. Where she had come from, she didn't know, but she was speeding homeward now. Terrible news had reached her about her brother. He had been stolen away to a foreign land._

_When she returned to the palace, it was high noon, and nobody was to be found. The Pharaoh's throne room was empty. Piles of sand had accumulated everywhere; statues and pillars were half-buried, as if the desert itself had quietly invaded the sanctuary while she was gone._

_She tore along the empty hallways to the chambers she had always shared with her brother. There was a layer of sand on the floor here, too, as if it had lain empty for untold time. Two of the three rooms were abandoned; it was in the last of them that she found Malik. He was standing alone by the window, looking out. Ishizu heard a faint scuttling from the corners as she entered, as if the room had only a moment before been filled with insects._

_She rushed to his side and took his hand, tears of relief springing to her eyes. He only looked at her blankly._

_The Gods have brought you back to me, safe and sound, she said._

_Malik took a reed that was growing by the window . Who? he wrote in the sand._

_Ishizu didn't understand. Who were they? she asked. Where did they take you? When did they bring you back?_

_The reed had turned into a knife when she wasn't looking. Malik turned it towards himself and made a long cut down the front of his body; it didn't bleed. Then he held his stomach open for her to see. Inside was nothing but dead leaves and sawdust._

_Can't you speak? she asked._

_He shook his head. When he opened his mouth, she saw that it was filled with linen._

Usually Ishizu was able to tell if someone she knew was all right, regardless of where they had gone. If their hearts still beat in this world, she would know. And if they were dead, or in trouble, a premonition would come to her. But tonight, when she searched the landscape of her heart for a sign of Malik, he was nowhere to be found. It was as if he had vanished from the map.

ʘ

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